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BY THE SAME AUTHOR 






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Men Who Missed 
the Trail 



BY 
GEORGE CLARKE PECK 




THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI 



-^ Til 81 



Copyright, 1917. by 
GEORGE CLARKE PECK 



FEB 24iyi7 
^>CIA457194 

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CONTENTS 

Page 
I. The Man Who Spoiled a Good 

Record 7 

II. The Man Who Dodged Promotion 23 

III. The Man Who Meant No Harm. . 38 

IV. The Man Who Lost His Dream ... 53 
V. The Man Who Fought the Stars. . 68 

VI. The Man Who Hoodwinked Him- 
self 83 

VII. The Man Who Defeated His 

Friends 98 

VIII. The Man Who Adjourned the 

Meeting 112 

IX. The Man Who Drove Hard 127 

X. The Man Who Got What He Gave 142 
XI. The Man Who Disliked the Pre- 
scription 157 

XII. The Man Who Got His Price 172 

XIII. The Man Who Started Wrong 187 

XIV. The Man Who Could Not Wait. . . 202 
XV. The Man Who Could Not Find 

Room 216 

XVI. The Man Who Blamed Others 231 

XVII. The Man Who Faced Both Wats. . 245 

XVIII. The Man Who Ran Past the Signal 259 
XIX. The Man Who Went with the 

Crowd 274 



THE MAN WHO SPOILED A 
GOOD RECORD 

Every modern newspaper has, as part of 
its regular equipment, a "Morgue." Never 
mind the gruesomeness of the name: the 
thing in itself is very interesting, and highly 
important to the proper conduct of a modern 
journal. Briefly, it consists of photographs, 
biographical sketches, and all sorts of per- 
sonalia. Nearly every local celebrity, with 
many others, is represented. Let Mr. Jones 
or Mrs. Brown run for office, or even for a 
trolley car disastrously; or break one of the 
commandments, or start south with an un- 
usual array of trunks, and out comes the 
photograph, plus sundry personal items in 
which the people are expected to be inter- 
ested. Incidentally, this is how it happens 
that such caricatures of public personages 
occasionally adorn the pages of your favorite 
journal. The particular photograph was 
taken years ago, and in lieu of a later or 

7 



8 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

better likeness, was brought from the 
"Morgue" for current use. 

But the "Morgue" contains notables only. 
You could not expect a newspaper to be 
interested in all the clerks and mechanics 
of a community. Most of us may go down 
town and come back, days without number; 
may earn a modest living, and mind our 
own business, and keep the commandments 
with reasonable care. And unless we — ah, 
that is just it. We must be or do something 
unusual. We must climb high or fall low. 
We must be so handsome or so homely that 
we attract attention. We must be a good 
deal better or a good deal worse than our 
neighbors on the block. We must run for 
something, or away from it. We must break 
out of the class of the average man, or we 
shall find no place in the "Morgue." 

But pardon. I was only preparing the 
way to observe that if there had been a news- 
paper in Elisha's town, the man we are to 
study would have been missing from its 
"Morgue" — at least until after the tragedy. 
Elisha's photograph would have been in- 
cluded, with certain more or less authentic 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 9 

reports of his activities. But not Gehazi. 
Newspapers are seldom interested in Gehazi 
— until he happens to strike a fortune or to 
misbehave outrageously. Imagine the ordi- 
nary employee of a great daily — a doorman 
or compositor or elevator boy — getting his 
picture into the "Morgue." That is not the 
way the world works. 

Yet — and we need to make that small 
word emphatic — yet, you cannot tell the 
story of Elisha and omit Gehazi. You never 
can. Gehazi, in his way, is as important as 
Elisha. In spite of newspaper discrim- 
inations and all other kinds of mistaken 
emphasis, Elisha without Gehazi is not quite 
Elisha. One morning Gehazi failed to put 
in an appearance at the usual hour. Of 
course his master knew it would be so. 
Elisha knew the tragic reason. And, still, 
it was a different day for Elisha — the day 
of the morning on which Gehazi failed to 
appear. 

Suppose that when you reach the office 
to-morrow your stenographer should not be 
there. One stenographer more or less, and 
a world well stocked with them — what dif- 



10 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

ference? But it is your stenographer that 
is absent to-morrow morning, and you must 
write your letters instead of dictating them. 
To be sure, you can fill the place easily — 
perhaps; but meantime you experience an 
uncomfortable jolt. You had forgotten 
how comparatively helpless a shrewd busi- 
ness man can be when his helpers are miss- 
ing. Or the cook failed to arrive in time to 
prepare your breakfast, or the milkman was 
late, or the postman was stricken on his 
route, or the morning paper blew down the 
street, or anything else you happen to think 
of. Merely a small cog in the big and com- 
plex machine of a day. Offhand you might 
tell yourself how independent you are. But 
it is disconcerting how the failure of the 
smallest cog upsets the machine. Sometimes 
I fancy that most of the trouble in the world 
results from the failure of the smallest cogs 
to function properly. 

And that brings us straight back to 
Gehazi — the man who spoiled a good record. 
For the moment never mind how Elisha 
regarded Gehazi's station. The important 
thing to inquire is how Gehazi regarded it. 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 11 

For Elisha to think meanly of the other's 
task were a pity. But for Gehazi so to 
think would be a calamity. Some one tells 
of a famous orchestral leader who one day 
paused in the midst of practice, shook his 
baton impatiently, and cried, "Flageolet, 
flageolet!" Neither the deep rumble of the 
viols nor the sharp cry of the horns deceived 
his keen ear. No other instrument could 
fill the place of the humblest of all. He 
missed the flageolet. And his interruption 
of practice was a call to the flageolet player 
to magnify his own work. We are so con- 
stantly tempted to think that our part in 
the orchestra is unimportant. If we could 
play the spectacular trombone, or draw bow 
across the strings of the leading violin, that 
were different. But as things are, nobody 
else will know whether we play or not. Our 
score is so small. 

I wonder who knows very much about this 
matter of bigness or smallness? The worst 
logic in the world is the "irrelevant logic of 
size." And we did not learn it in the school 
of Jesus Christ. Magnitude proves noth- 
ing! India has the tallest mountain in the 



12 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

world, but I cannot discover that she has 
profited thereby. We have the longest river 
in the world, but even that did not save us 
from the "Ku Klux Klan" or making a 
muddle in Mexico. Evidently, there is a 
good deal to be said in favor of forty-two 
centimeter guns ; but I do not think the war 
will be won by them. Napoleon marched 
into Russia one of the most invincible armies 
ever mustered, to meet defeat, not at the 
hands of Cossacks but by snowflakes just 
such as you blow from your sleeve on a 
winter day. Stanley said that the worst 
enemy that his men had to face in Africa 
were "jiggers" — a species of tiny worm. So 
I can easily believe that this vast continent- 
wide war may be decided not by guns, but 
by the size of a grain harvest or germs too 
small to see with the naked eye. 

Years ago, as my friend was dying in 
California, he sat propped up in bed and 
poured out his soul to me. He was so plucky 
that even his trembling pencil was pointed 
with fire and burned the paper. He so 
wanted to live. Then he wrote: "O, Peck, 
dear fellow, I'm not afraid to die, but I can't 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 13 

bear to be eaten up by these miserable little 
bugs." Yet we live every day by the help 
of allies just as infinitesimal. Physical health 
is spelled out in body-cells so small you 
cannot see them except with the aid of a 
microscope. And the most stalwart man 
that lives is absolutely dependent upon the 
perfect marshaling and coordination of 
myriads of tiny organisms. 

Evidently, God has a scale of values very 
different from ours. One day Jesus, point- 
ing, it may be, to a dead sparrow in the 
path, quoted the market price of sparrows, 
and said, "Not one of them falleth to the 
ground without your Father." At another 
time he waved his hand toward some common 
field-flowers, and cried, "If God so clothe 
the grass." He was not making sentences, 
as the rhetoricians do, to show how brilliant 
they are. He was reciting the plain prose 
of every day. He was telling his brothers 
and sisters what kind of a God we work for 
— what sort of a Father ours is. 

And if Gehazi ever learns this lesson, not 
all the snobs on earth can make him ashamed 
of his calling. One of my cloth once ven- 



14 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

tured to commiserate a cobbler upon the 
lowliness of his task. But the cobbler, with 
the pride of an archangel in his eyes, flung 
back the preacher's pity into his face: "If 
I peg shoes as conscientiously as you pre- 
pare sermons, I'll be just as acceptable to 
God." What of preachers, anyhow, except 
for plain shoemakers, plain artisans, and all 
sorts of humble folks to practice the preach- 
ing? And who really knows just which is 
the most important business in the world? 
The general depends upon his staff, and they 
upon the men in the ranks, and they upon 
the commissary department, and all upon 
the munition makers and transport service, 
and ultimately upon the farmers in a thou- 
sand fields. Nothing that needs to be done 
is unimportant. No real service can ever be 
mean. The humblest task that God lays at 
any man's hand is worthy of being invested 
with celestial dignity. Till he summons to 
something else, put self respect into the duty 
nearest. 

But back to Gehazi. We catch our first 
glimpse of him on an errand for his master. 
"Go, call this Shunammite," said Elisha. 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 15 

And for some reason Gehazi obeyed. I 
wonder if he was proud to go? At least he 
went. One of the finest fragments that ever 
fell from the gifted pen of Elbert Hubbard 
was his Message to Garcia. Taking hint 
from a trifling episode, he glorified the man 
who can be trusted to do the duty assigned 
him. I do not recall the messenger's name. 
I am not sure that Hubbard knew it. But 
that is not the question. Our name is never 
so important as the errand we are charged 
with. Let God keep the record of names. 
Meantime, with all dispatch, heat or cold, 
at any cost, the Message to Garcia. From 
most of us God asks no finer achievement 
than whole-hearted delivery of the message. 
We are not masters — not many of us: we 
are under orders. And the way we discharge 
our commission tells the kind of people we 
are. 

A certain ordinary patrolman had just 
displayed genuine skill in handling an emer- 
gency case. Before the ambulance arrived 
he had administered most timely "first aid." 
And the ambulance surgeon looked him 
over and suggested, "You ought to have 



16 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

been a surgeon." For an instant the officer's 
eye clouded. Perhaps he was dreaming one 
of those dreams that unfit the soul. Then 
he replied, "What's the matter with my 
being a policeman?" What, indeed? What's 
the matter with putting into our day's work 
all the genius we have? Frankly, I do not 
set great store by our usual outcries against 
our present task and our demand for a 
higher. Perhaps there are motormen who 
ought to have been lawyers and diplomats. 
But I can think of lawyers and diplomats 
who would have been more useful as motor- 
men. Every one wants to get up in the 
world. And most of the world's urgent 
work must be done near the ground. Obedi- 
ence is a finer quality than independence. 
Some people are so taken up with their 
independence they have no time to do their 
duty. Gehazi was a "great" servant — for 
a time. He knew how to do as he was told. 
He could carry a message uncolored and 
undiminished. Perhaps he could do that 
better than Elisha could. You did not need 
to ask him if the errand was performed. 
That is the sort of man he was. 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 17 

Then the scene changes and again we have 
sight of Gehazi — still the reliable man. Into 
a certain home at Shunem the shadows had 
fallen. If it had been a modern home there 
would have been a flutter of piteous white 
at the door. Some of you know what that 
means. The white has hung at your door, 
and, within, were broken hearts and a little 
still form. And you sent for the preacher. 
So did the Shunammite woman. Some folks 
never send at any other time. We preachers 
get used, I suppose, to being looked upon 
as a sort of post-mortem necessity. But 
scores of times — shall I not say hundreds — 
with my hand upon the doorbell near the 
telltale emblem, I have wished I might have 
been found use for while the sun was still 
high and the songs unhushed. 

I wonder if God feels the same way? 
Among the tragic pities of life is the pity 
that so many people seem to get on without 
God until the shadows fall deep and black. 
Somebody tells of a child who objected to 
saying his prayers in the morning. No pro- 
test at night — only in the morning. And 
the reason he gave was as definite as our 



18 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

own: "I can take care of myself in the day- 
time," he said. So many of us feel; or, at 
least, we act upon that basis. We can look 
after our affairs while the sun shines. Only 
when night falls, and we are afraid of the 
dark, do we grope for the Father's hand. 
John said of the Celestial City that there 
shall be "no night there." But one would 
scarcely dare to pray for nightless days here 
and now: so many of the Father's children 
would miss him altogether. 

So the Shunammite woman sought the 
prophet of old. I must not attempt to re- 
count the story. All that concerns us just 
now is Gehazi's part in the transaction. See 
him hurrying to lay the prophet's staff upon 
the face of the dead boy. I wonder why 
Elisha gave such a commission. Probably 
he merely wished to make sure that the child 
was really dead — as when the nurse holds a 
mirror at the lips of a pulseless patient. And 
Gehazi carried out instructions scrupulously. 
He laid the staff upon the face of the child 
— so, and so, and so. And nothing hap- 
pened. Did he expect that something would? 

Most of us have a sort of superstitious 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 19 

regard for the prophet's staff. In the famous 
church of Saint Anne at Beaupre is a relic 
of the saint. It is a tiny bit of bone from 
the hand of the mother of Mary. They 
keep it in a small, circular glass box, and 
bring it out on great occasions. I have seen 
the priest pass it over a string of beads or 
the head of a suppliant, as if there were 
intrinsic merit in a fragment of bone! 
Attached to the other bones of Saint Anne's 
living hand, that fragment no doubt was 
very useful. But when the good woman was 
done with it, it was merely a bone. As well 
expect a rabbit's foot, got in a cemetery at 
midnight, to bring good luck! 

No, Gehazi, the staff is valueless — except 
as a staff — apart from Elisha's hand. The 
staff method, as some one calls it, is always 
a failure. Let the Christian Scientist talk 
about "absent treatment" and its cures. But 
for the rest of us all real healings await the 
touch of the hand. God does not expect us 
to bless the world at arm's length. Elisha 
must come. Elisha must come before the 
light kindles again in dull eyes. Here, then, 
is the trouble with part of our ministry. 



20 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

Here is the hopeless sterility of many chari- 
table dollars. We forget that "the gift with- 
out the giver is bare." No substitute has 
yet been found for the warmth of a human 
hand. It is said that the highest polish on 
a piano cannot be secured except by the 
rubbing of the human palm. Be sure, then, 
that the rare brightness of souls is not 
brought out at less cost. Next time an occa- 
sion offers for you to bless another, don't 
send if you can avoid it. Go. 

Again the scene changes and we open the 
door upon Naaman's cure. And there is 
Gehazi. He it was, perhaps, who carried 
the strange prescription to Naaman. But 
the wonder has come and Naaman is clean. 
And with a spirit worth remembering Elisha 
declined to accept a reward either for him- 
self or for Gehazi. Some things cannot be 
paid for save in the coin of the heart. Not 
once in the twenty-four years of my ministry 
have I felt that I could receive a fee for 
service in the house of mourning. But 
Gehazi felt differently about such matters. 
Hence he overtook Naaman, and by the use 
of a fraudulent story secured the bonus 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 21 

which his master had declined on his behalf. 
Alas, Gehazi was not the man to miss the 
"main chance," as we call it. Naaman could 
afford to pay. Doubtless he ought to pay — 
and Gehazi would be the gainer. So he 
took the gift. 

How much better do we? Sometimes you 
will hear people blessing themselves for 
keeping their hands from pantry shelves 
they cannot reach. There is a deal of such 
virtue in the world. But untried virtue is 
no virtue at all. To see the "main chance" 
and set one's face against it; to refuse to 
claim the advantage life flings in your way; 
to hold back a passionate hand from the 
fruit within grasp — not as gratuitous 
martyrdom, but for the sake of one's soul — 
this marks a man. Gehazi could not do that. 
In the crucial test he failed. 

And the scene changes again. With his 
home door shut securely upon his new 
wealth, Gehazi is back with his master. But 
somehow Gehazi is an altered man. One 
need not be a prophet to discern the differ- 
ence. And when Elisha questioned, Gehazi 
lied. I do not know which was worse — the 



22 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

original fault or the falsehood which sought 
to cover it. But what is the uncanny white 
on Gehazi's cheek, mounting upward to his 
brow? Fear, or shame, or remorse — or 
leprosy? Suffice that he is marked for life. 
He who sells manhood for cash, or pleasure, 
or fame, is always marked for life. 



II 

THE MAN WHO DODGED 
PROMOTION 

Saul is a tantalizing study in contrasts. 
But I do not expect you to reprobate him 
for that reason. Where is the man who 
misses being a similar study? It is in geog- 
raphy only that Kipling's familiar lines 
hold good: 

O, East is East, and West is West, 
And never the twain shall meet. 

In human life they are constantly meeting. 
In each of us East elbows West and South 
crowds up against North. Savage and 
Christian, outlaw and good citizen, jungle 
and salon, jostle one another every day, and 
in every man that lives. You can no more 
describe a man in simple terms than you 
can "state" the climate of the so-called tem- 
perate zone, where we must occasionally con- 
sult the calendar in order to be sure how to 

23 



24 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

classify a particular day — whether as sum- 
mer or winter, spring or fall. 

So, I repeat, I do not expect you to 
reprobate Saul at the very beginning of our 
study, chiefly because he is a man of con- 
trasts. To say that the two leading portraits 
of him, furnished us in this album, do not 
agree is to say a superficial thing. No two 
portraits ever do agree, and for a profound 
reason — that no human being can be caught 
in the same mood two successive moments. 
In the famous gallery at Paris hang two 
portraits of Rembrandt — both done by his 
own hand. One shows him as a young man 
of twenty, perhaps, the wonderful eye aflame 
with the light of certain triumph and popu- 
lar fame. The second canvas reveals a man 
prematurely old, the face bloated with sen- 
suality, haggard, disillusioned, tragically 
sad, the eye muddied with sin. Between the 
two portraits, and explaining their contrast, 
lies the corrupt middle life of the master — 
its open shame and public scandal. It is 
said that when Leonardo da Vinci, toward 
completion of his wonderful "The Last 
Supper," came to need a model for Judas, 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 25 

he, by fearful irony, selected the subject who 
had posed for the figure of Jesus years 
before. Ponder it: the same man, within 
span of a few years of dissipation, furnishing 
competent clue to the looks of both Jesus and 
Judas ! 

But I instance the case not so much for 
the sake of proving how a life may run 
down hill as to remind you that upland and 
lowland, saint and scalawag, Jesus and 
Judas, are potentially present in the same 
man at the same time. Some day you submit 
yourself to the ordeal of being photographed. 
And the camera-artist, anxious for a satis- 
factory result, poses you several times and 
in due course sends home a half dozen proofs. 
And you? — well, you are naturally flattered 
or displeased, as the case may be. Probably 
you pass the proofs around, asking your inti- 
mates to help you select the "best likeness," 
and are somewhat chagrined if they chance 
to hit upon the least comely presentment. 
But the most arresting item in the whole 
proceeding is that you should look like a 
half dozen different folks. No two prints 
ever agree in the revelations of the subject 



26 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

before the camera: and for the profoundest 
of reasons. While the artist was changing 
plates, or readjusting the focus, or shifting 
the poise of your chin, you silently altered 
your mood. Who will deny that the same 
man may be a half dozen kinds of men in 
as many minutes? And the camera merely 
catches the mood which the subject of it 
hardly recognized. 

So with divergent estimates of a man. It 
has been said that the story of Saul, as we 
have it recorded in the Bible, was penned by 
different hands — one admiring, the other 
scornful. Perhaps. Such things occur very 
often. Froude called Henry VIII a 
"patriot king." Macaulay gave him a very 
much less complimentary name. The New 
York Sun described Lincoln as a buffoon, 
whereas the New York Tribune sketched 
him of heroic size. Or, if you will have more 
modern instance, take the present incumbent 
of the White House and let this be open 
meeting. No two of you will probably agree 
as to his character or the value of his services. 
How can you? I do not believe that any 
President can fully agree with himself for 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 27 

an hour. The more sincere a man is the 
more trouble he will experience in naming 
his own grade. We are composites, all of 
us. We are strange creatures of contrast. 
Winter and summer, frost and sun, strive 
within us forever. Never mind that Saul's 
biographers failed to agree about him. He 
could not have agreed with respect to 
himself. 

Let us look at him kindly. He was a 
big man who could be guilty of the smallest 
things. You will frequently hear it said of 
a child who has prematurely gone forward 
toward physical maturity that "it is un- 
fortunate to be so big. People expect too 
much of such a child." And, for some reason 
or other, we seem to "expect more" from 
two hundred than from a hundred and 
twenty pounds ; from six feet than from five. 
Marshall P. Wilder's poor, twisted body 
might have been admirably adapted to his 
drollery on the platform. But you never 
would consider, offhand, selecting such a 
misshapen mortal to plead a great cause or 
welcome royalty. Knowing perfectly well 
that the size of a man's body is no more index 



28 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

of the size of his soul than the weight of a 
pearl is of its value, we continue to pay 
absurd homage to size. Even to Samuel's 
rather critical eyes Saul looked the king — 
just as George Washington looked the 
heroic role he played. You would have ex- 
pected great things of him — as you never 
would from Caesar or Napoleon, both of 
them undersized. Saul was a marked man 
anywhere. His powerful shoulders and 
towering head singled him out. I can 
imagine how altogether proud his father was 
of him. And when Samuel picked him for 
the arduous honor of kingship it was not 
more than his father and mother had always 
dreamed. 

But to live up to one's reputation is quite 
another matter. In the issue Saul might 
easily have wished that he had been six or 
eight inches shorter, and that he had re- 
mained hidden when they were looking for 
him "among the stuff." To disappoint the 
world's expectation, to frustrate the dreams 
your friends have dreamed concerning you, 
to receive in advance pay for the noblest 
service and then not to deliver the goods — 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 29 

in other words, not to play one's part — is 
always solemn business. Has it ever occurred 
to you that you owe the world to be as good 
as it thinks you are? Grant that you never 
asked the honor, and that you distinctly re- 
mind men you are no better than they, does 
that let you off? One recalls the plaintive 
cry which a pair of broken-hearted disciples 
dropped into the ear of our Lord on the walk 
to Emmaus. "We trusted it had been he 
which should have redeemed Israel." Sup- 
pose it had not been he ? Suppose that Jesus 
had been unable or unwilling to fulfill such 
wistful dreams? Suppose that, after gather- 
ing to himself "the hopes and fears of all 
the years," and such passionate attachment 
as no other son of woman ever won, he had 
disappointed the ages? 

O, I know what you will say — indeed, I 
have said it many times — that nobody else 
has right to set the gauge for your life or 
mine. I wonder. I wonder if what the world 
expects of us may not be the precise thing 
God is asking. I wonder if my mother could 
possibly fix the standard higher than God 
would fix it. Yes, yes, of course people are 



30 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

sometimes very unreasonable, far less reason- 
able than God is. But forget that for a 
moment. All I am saying is that often- 
times the world's hopes lay solemn obligation 
upon us. And then to disappoint those 
hopes, as Saul did; to play a part less kingly 
than the part you look fitted for. Poor 
Saul — how misplaced his big shoulders 
looked when he tried to hide "behind the 
stuff," on his coronation day ! Like a bashful 
schoolboy twisting the corners of his coat, 
like modern Englishmen begging off from 
military service in the hour of their country's 
need. For a big man Saul could be so pa- 
thetically small. 

Next, he was a brave man whose prowess 
made him presumptuous. Success turned 
his head as it has done for so many of his 
posterity. The most intoxicating wine in the 
world is the wine of success. It goes straight 
to the brain. Overlooking the Hudson river 
in New York city is one of the palaces 
reared by modern money-kings. I remem- 
ber the pride of the neighbors, how they 
always pointed it out to guests. But they 
might as well be proud of proximity to a 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 31 

cemetery. It is not even an honorable 
mausoleum — that mammoth pile. It is an 
open sepulcher within which lies the blasted 
reputation of its builder. For "when he was 
strong" — and he had come through many 
vicissitudes from poverty to wealth, from 
mechanic's apprentice to magnate — "when 
he was strong, his heart was lifted up to his 
destruction." 

You can see the same thing happening 
anywhere. More souls, proportionately, 
have been hurt by success than by defeat. 
Now and again a defeated man commits 
suicide with poison or bullet. But the suc- 
cessful man may do even worse than that; 
he may murder his own soul. 

O, it is excellent 

To have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous 

To use it like a giant. 

I notice that a certain German prophet 
announced that within six months his coun- 
trymen would "dance on the grave of Eng- 
land." Indeed, that is the sort of fear some 
of us have with respect to the ultimate victor 
in this colossal conflict: that success may so 



32 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

madden it as to make it want to dance upon 
the grave of its defeated foe — as the Duke 
of Guise ground his heel into the face of 
the dead Coligny. 

Honestly, who are the worst foes of Amer- 
ican sanctities? Not the frank anarchists, 
not the embittered poor, but the defiant 
prosperous who scarcely hesitate to flaunt 
any law which bars their way: the men who 
wreck railroads and crush their fellow men, 
who bribe judges and smile patronizingly at 
God. More havoc, for example, has been 
done to the marriage altar by the divorces 
and double establishments of the rich than 
by the franker immoralities of the poor. 
More harm has been done to the Sabbath 
by well-groomed desecrators than by raga- 
muffins howling in vacant lots and by roister- 
ing foreigners. Sacrilege and lawlessness — 
these are peculiarly the sins which break out 
of success. You may see them both in Saul, 
sacrilege when he ventured to perform the 
priest's function in the absence of Samuel, 
lawlessness when he spared Agag in express 
defiance of divine command. 

Weak, he would have dared neither; 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 83 

strong, he became guilty of both. Sacrilege 
and lawlessness — these are the sins of the 
strong. And it is the strong who need pray 
oftenest one part of David's familiar peti- 
tion: "Keep back thy servant also from 
presumptuous sins; let them not have do- 
minion over me." 

Again Saul was a man of generous im- 
pulses, but poisoned by suspiciousness. You 
would have liked him — until you discovered 
that he never thoroughly trusted you. He 
enjoyed the sensation of magnanimity, but 
he never quite let himself go. The record 
says that he loved David at first sight, yet 
soon turned bitter. He was fond of Samuel, 
but was easily persuaded that the prophet 
was plotting to undo him. What a host of 
good hearts are shrunken by suspicion! 
This is certainly a sad world for the man 
who is on the lookout for evil. Othello did 
not want to believe ill of his beautiful wife, 
but once the seed had dropped in his soul, the 
fruit was certain. I ago knew he needed only 
to insinuate. "Now let the poison work," 
he said. Othello's suspicious nature would 
complete the task. 



34 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul — 
Let me not name it to you, yon chaste stars. 
It is the cause. Yet I'll not shed her blood ; 
Nor mar that whiter skin of hers than alabaster. 
Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men. 

O, balmy breath that doth almost persuade 
Justice to break her sword. 

Well enough for Caesar to insist that 
"Caesar's wife must be above suspicion," but 
neither Caesar's wife nor Caesar's friend nor 
Caesar's butler can keep "above suspicion" 
when Caesar's mind is poisoned. Not even 
Jesus escaped. What his critics failed to 
see, they still gave him credit for. O, the 
pity of reading into the souls of people 
malignances that may never have been there ! 
And O the shame of discovering, too late 
for remedy, that the fault we imputed had 
no existence except in our own brain. Better 
that a dozen guilty folks escape their just 
deserts than that a single innocent should be 
branded by our suspicion. Jealousy makes 
us see black as well as green. 

But again: Saul is a striking instance of 
fine tastes and violent outbursts, in juxta- 
position. He loved music passionately. 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 35 

Offhand, you might say that a man who 
loved harmony of sound or color so dearly 
could hardly be guilty of discord in his own 
life. At least that is what we frequently 
affirm to-day. We talk as if lovers of paint- 
ing and flowers and music were already pos- 
sessors of the Kingdom. If it were only true ! 
Alas, that some of the most dreadful passions 
the world records have broken out of souls 
that loved the beautiful. I doubt if all 
poetry of motion, all musical raptures, to- 
gether with all sculpture and painting, 
ever redeemed one life from destruction. 
^Esthetics are one thing, ethics are another. 
To Oscar Wilde beauty was everything; 
disharmony hurt him like a slap in the face. 
If aesthetics could save anybody, Oscar 
Wilde offered a good opportunity. But the 
man to whom beauty was god sank so low 
that an English prison swallowed him for 
a season. Did you read his De Profundis? 
— the ghastly confession of the apostle of 
beauty? Thank God for all refinement, but 
remember that the finer the nature the more 
terrible disharmony you may evoke if the 
instrument be out of tune. See Saul rousing 



36 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

from the sensuous spell of David's music to 
hurl a javelin at the musician's head. 

I should like to speak at length upon one 
further paradox in Saul. He was naturally 
religious. He became so enthusiastic at one 
time that his friends sneered about his "turn- 
ing preacher." Yet read again the tense 
story of his visit to the witch of Endor, and 
see this favored man hanging breathless over 
the magic brew, crying for Samuel. What 
do you worship, the altar or its Lord? Is 
it the Sabbath concerns you or the Lord 
of the Sabbath? Have you more confidence 
in God than in palmists, and thirteen at 
table, and Friday terrors? If you really 
wanted to know the way, would you pray, 
or would you consult a clairvoyant? Like 
any other beautiful power this highest power 
of all may be perverted, and the man of 
religion may become easily the man of super- 
stition. 

But Saul. He died as he had lived — a 
man of contrasts. With a flaring up of the 
old imperial spirit which made his soldiers 
love him, he declined to live beyond the 
defeat of his army. He ordered his armor- 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 37 

bearer to make an end of a defeated king. 
And when the armor-bearer shrank back 
from such treason Saul pitched forward 
hungrily upon his own sword. O, Saul, if 
thou hadst lived up to thy beginnings! 



Ill 

THE MAN WHO MEANT NO 
HARM 

On the floor of a certain famous chamber, 
in Holyrood Castle, is a sinister-looking 
stain. Frankly, one may need to use his 
imagination as well as his eyes in order to 
recognize it. Whatever it may have been 
once, to-day it is not much of a stain. Never- 
theless, it serves to recall one of the many 
love affairs of Scotland's best-loved queen; 
and, in particular, it reminds you of the 
lover, her secretary, whose blood is said to 
have reddened the floor of his lady's room. 
At the scene of his sacrilege he made forfeit 
of his life. By the desecration of an altar 
he got himself remembered who otherwise 
might, long ago, have been forgotten — an 
immortality of remembrance if not of praise. 

Somewhat similarly Uzzah made certain 
of being remembered. By the loss of his 

88 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 39 

own life at the side of the ark, toward which 
he stretched out an eager, if unwise, hand, 
he saved himself from oblivion. Apart from 
the tragedy we should not know his name. 
He might have lived a good life and done 
many a graceful act and, so far as historic 
mention goes, succeeded in being as com- 
pletely forgotten as the flowers that once 
bloomed in Nero's garden. But, by a single 
deed and the price he paid, he wrote his 
name among the immortals. In proof of 
which immortality of remembrance we are 
studying him now — the man who meant no 
harm. 

That poor, crumpled heap of a man by 
the side of the ark he tried to steady — I 
scarcely need ask if you approve of the fate 
which won him his age-long remembrance. 
Normally, you approve very tamely. Find 
the story in any book except the Bible, and 
you would disapprove most heartily. In- 
deed, God has to constantly put up with our 
disapproval. We do not approve of the 
present war, nor of the premature loss of a 
mother, nor of grippe germs, and what not. 
A list of our disapprovals would cover a 



40 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

good deal of stationery. And so far as God 
is responsible for the tragedies against which 
our hearts cry out, we withhold approval of 
God himself. O, if we dared to phrase the 
faults we find with the divine administra- 
tion! As a matter of fact, many of the 
criticisms we pass against this and that are 
but thinly veiled tilts at God himself. And 
God holds his way undismayed, unswerved, 
unrevengeful, but, as I sometimes fancy, 
with a great pain at his heart because his 
children lay up so many things against him. 
He "lets the lifted thunder drop" and, in a 
sense very different from that the poet in- 
tended in our familiar hymn, on smiling 
fields and tall cedars. 

Word came to me recently of the tragic 
death of a whilom parishioner. He was on 
the roof of his new building, and he mis- 
stepped, and God failed to abrogate the law 
of gravitation — and the aged father is break- 
ing his heart. Colonel Waring took a chance 
when he went to Cuba to clean out its pests 
of disease. I am sure that God honored 
the spirit of the man, yet the man's life paid 
forfeit for exposure to the deadly germs. 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 41 

Humanly speaking, that "beautiful boy 
Keats," as one described him, ought not to 
have died so young. But God has certain 
laws which may not be trifled with, even by 
so rare a soul as John Keats. And here are 
men working at high pressure against the 
dictates of sanity and the warnings of physi- 
cians, playing with fire in hope of snatching, 
unscathed, a few extra luxuries for their 
loved ones. Some day the flame catches 
them. We call it apoplexy, or Bright's 
disease, or what we may: 'tis the fire men 
play with. And shall we then use hard 
names upon the heavenly Father for letting 
the fire do its work? 

Every law of the good God is a "holy" 
law. Laws of health, laws of physics, laws 
of conservation — as truly as laws of chastity 
and honor and truth — are holy laws. We 
break none of them with impunity. Upon 
every one of them is fixed a price for trans- 
gression. And for every piece of sacrilege 
— whether against the ark of health, or the 
ark of friendship or justice or domestic 
honor — there is a penalty which somebody 
pays, soon or late. Else God were less than 



42 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

God. So this man who meant no harm 
dropped by the side of the outraged shrine. 
Not even his sincerity of intention saved 
him. His affair was not to speculate as to 
what might happen to the ark when the oxen 
stumbled, his duty was to keep his hands 
off the ark. 

But of that later. Meantime, I wonder 
if, tumbling beside the ark, Uzzah lived long 
enough to wish he had never been promoted. 
Time was when you and I could not grow 
up fast enough. We were avid of the privi- 
leges of maturity. We saw grown men 
doing the things we lusted to do — driving 
their own teams, smoking big cigars, taking 
holidays when they pleased, and staying up 
all night if thus it suited them. We saw 
women with the luxury of seats at the opera, 
and their own establishments, and children 
in their arms. And then we also grew up. 
We came into possession of some of the joys 
for which once we sighed. Our dreams came 
true. And how often have we looked into 
the faces of our privileges, wondering if they 
were worth what they cost! 

Every square foot you add to your door- 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 43 

yard means more weeds, possibly, as well 
as flowers. Every addition to the domain 
of our country has brought us fresh prob- 
lems and perils. And every blessing which 
the good God can drop into a soul carries 
seeds of bitter harvesting. Even the sanc- 
tities, for intrustment with which we ought 
to fall on our knees every day, thanking God, 
furnish new opportunities for sacrilege. 
Suppose that God enriched you with the 
gift of a glorious voice, like Jenny Lind's; 
would you treat it as a sanctity as she did, 
and "sing to God" — even more than to the 
audience ? Or would you put a price upon it 
and sell it ? Let God grant you a friend as 
Jonathan to David, as Hallam to Tennyson. 
What then? Friendship is a shrine before 
which the irreverent soul may play the 
wanton more tragically than a recluse could 
possibly play it. 

Let God give you a home, with the love 
of husband or wife and the clinging arms 
of children. But when God gives that he 
sets an ark of the covenant within the walls 
of the place you call "home." 'Tis the ark 
makes the home. And the sacrileges per- 



44 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

petuated against the ark of the home are 
less excusable than all the ribaldries of 
Bohemianism. Or, let Jesus Christ cross 
our path, as he crossed Peter's and 
Matthew's and Nathanael's. Much has 
been made of the beauty he brought to his 
friends. But what about Judas and Pilate 
and the soldiers who platted the crown of 
thorns ? Jesus came to them also. The sanc- 
tity was at their gate. But for the ark 
within reach they might have been spared 
the greater infamy connected with their 
names. To be called out of any sort of 
obscurity by any voice of God, to be set to 
walking beside an ark, as Uzzah was, and 
to realize the possible sacrilege of an un- 
guarded moment is enough to hush our step 
as in a temple. 

But Uzzah. He was evidently an ordinary 
human being, with normal religious im- 
pulses. I do not know that he would have 
sought his post of honor behind the ark. 
Possibly he would have preferred plowing 
or fishing. But, be that as it may, he 
had toward the ark of the covenant the usual 
sentiments of a normal man. He was reli- 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 45 

gious. And when the oxen stumbled he 
flung out a quick hand to save the ark. You 
will often hear men classify themselves as 
religious or irreligious. There are no "irre- 
ligious" men, save as freaks of nature — like 
a man with one kidney, or the heart on the 
wrong side. Men everywhere are religious. 
As Sabatier puts it, "Man is incurably 
religious." Some of the most religious 
people I ever knew shunned prayer meet- 
ings and never opened the Bible and ren- 
dered scant homage to Jesus Christ. Yet 
were they religious. God creates no other 
kind of folks. Catch them unaware, strike 
them deep enough, and you evoke the re- 
ligious response. 

As I was leaving a certain home recently 
the man of the house said this, half in deri- 
sion, perhaps: "No, I don't come to church 
often, but I suppose that Billy Sunday will 
get me." Such is the warm hope many are 
cherishing in their hearts, concerning hus- 
bands and friends, that Billy Sunday will 
"get" them. This is the real animus of the 
long-planned campaign: we hope that in 
spite of his absurdities and contortions Billy 



46 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

Sunday will "get" the men and women our 
churches are failing to reach. And if he 
does? It will not be by making men and 
women religious. They will be that before 
he comes and they will be that after he goes, 
whether or not he "gets" them, as we say. 
They cannot help being that. 

Not even Jesus came to make people 
religious. They were religious already, 
after an ingrowing, painful fashion. He 
came to evoke melody, not to put it in. 
Have you had an accomplished musician sit 
down at your piano — the same piano on 
which you laboriously pick out hymns, and 
the children practice ? Not a very large por- 
tion of the scale of the average piano is ever 
used: just an octave or two near "middle C." 
The rest of the keyboard might as well be 
in Iceland. Then the musician sits down 
at your piano. For a moment his fingers 
wander coaxingly over the keys, as if he were 
calling to some spirit within the case. Then 
he plays, and deep thunders roll up from 
the lower octaves, and brooks seem to laugh 
from the upper register. Shouts and songs, 
prayers and love calls, storms and zephyrs — 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 47 

all from the instrument which had so often 
stood ornamental and voiceless in your 
parlor. You had scarcely dreamed it held 
so much potential wonder. Yet, as a matter 
of fact, the musician at the keyboard had 
not added a single string to the piano's 
equipment. He had not lengthened the key- 
board an inch. He had merely brought out 
what was in. 

And that is the genius of Jesus Christ and 
all his coadjutors. They bring out what was 
in man from the beginning. We do not 
make men and women religious. At our 
best we simply play upon hitherto unused 
portions of the keyboard. We call forth the 
harmonies which have lain slumbering in the 
strings. We let men discover how much it 
means to be sons of God. Surely we cannot 
expect Billy Sunday to do a diviner thing 
than that. All he can hope to do is to play 
upon the instrument God made. 

But Uzzah — the man who meant no harm. 
I am sure that my topic well describes him. 
Even when he reached out an impious hand 
to steady the tottering ark he intended well. 
His tragic fate by the side of the ark argues 



48 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

nothing against the purity of his motive. He 
died because, while intending well, he was 
guilty of grievous harm. Sometimes I think 
that the Recording Angel must keep two 
sets of books : one for our motives, the other 
for our deeds. What we actually accomplish 
is so different from what we intend. Seri- 
ously, I believe that most of us mean well 
most of the days. Even in our worst moods 
we still require a clean bill of health for our 
motives. 

In one of the hospitals of our city lies a 
woman battling with death which she herself 
invited to her door. Easy enough to repro- 
bate her wild act. Statute law in most of the 
States declares it is a crime for a human 
being to attempt to shorten his own journey. 
But that is not to say the suicide means 
wrong. On the contrary, he means right, 
as he sees it. And the woman who swal- 
lowed the dose which she supposed would end 
all was choosing, as between two evils, that 
which seemed to her the lesser. 

So it is commonly with us. We do not 
intend to do wrong. We first reassure our- 
selves that the wrong we want to do is right. 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 49 

We mean no real harm. The thief probably 
finds it easy to believe he needs what he 
takes more than the owner needs it. David 
did not mean any harm to Bathsheba. Per- 
haps he went so far as to convince himself 
that it would be better for her to have Uriah 
out of the way. O, the endless sophistica- 
tions of the soul! Lay open the heart- 
cloister of the gayest destroyer and you will 
find him salving conscience with the plea that 
he does not mean any harm. And the re- 
venges we practice, what of them? Why, we 
do not call them revenges at all. We are 
merely defending ourselves; collecting our 
just dues, giving truth a chance to prevail. 
Any harm we may do is purely incidental to 
a righteous campaign. 

"What fools these mortals be!" I sup- 
pose the Kaiser had the purest motives 
imaginable: and so had all the others who 
helped bring on the war. Yet a continent 
is reeking with blood. Do you think the 
final Judgment for this colossal crime will 
be according to motive? 

Evil is wrought by want of thought 
As well as want of feeling. 



50 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

Uzzah died by the ark, though his heart 
and hand were honest. 

But the sin for which Uzzah's life paid 
the penalty was the sin of sacrilege. I know 
there is a spirit which insists that a human 
life is worth more than any ark ever fash- 
ioned. Measuring, even by commercial 
tables, we figure that a man is worth, say, 
three thousand dollars to the State. And 
measuring as God must measure who spared 
not his own Son, what price shall we set 
upon a life? Yet, according to this tragic 
record, the man died for a thing. 

Ah, but to say that is to miss the meaning 
of the story. The ark of the covenant was 
not merely a thing: it was a symbol. It 
stood for the holiest hopes and most daring 
dreams of Uzzah's race. It represented God. 
It was sign of things eternal. And as 
such it might be worth more than a human 
life or a thousand of them. Uzzah's life 
was worthily forfeited by the side of the 
ark, if thus he helped save to his race the 
values for which the ark stood. But of that 
at another time; just now, this: 

At any cost we must preserve the fine 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 51 

sanctities of life. Whatever tends to cheapen 
life is sacrilege — the most heinous of sins. 
There comes back to me the admonition of 
a father to his son's classmates as they bore 
the casket of their fellow up the aisle: "Go 
softly, boys," he said; "remember that you 
are carrying the temple of the Holy Ghost." 
The body as temple — do you think of it so? 
Do you treat it so? Utility, animal, labora- 
tory, or temple, which is it? Most of our 
thoughtless sins would expire in our hearts 
if we thought of our bodies as temples. We 
should hold back avid hands if we remem- 
bered. 

And the lives of our neighbors — O, the 
sacrilegious hands we fling out, whether in 
passion or solicitude! So terribly prompt 
are we with criticism or scorn; so painfully 
familiar. Remember that the other man's 
life is an ark, upon which no sudden hand 
must be laid. Respect his sanctity as you 
would demand respect for your own. Not 
even in a burst of solicitude do you touch 
his life profanely. 

And God. God has many arks of the 
covenant: the church, the Sabbath, the home, 



52 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

friendship, childhood, the hearts of men. By 
our treatment of them we learn how to treat 
him. Because of what they mean we must 
hold them sacred. Even when the oxen 
stumble, let God take care of his own ark. 
His stake is greater than ours. By all 
means, and at any cost, let us hold back 
our hands from the touch that profanes. 



IV 

THE MAN WHO LOST HIS 
DREAM 

Not long ago there came to light an old 
diary kept in careful, Spencerian hand. It 
was a boy's diary of a transatlantic voyage 
— my own diary of my first trip across the 
sea. You can guess just the sort of entries 
I found — notes of storms long since for- 
gotten, impressions no longer impressive, 
names of people I had not thought of for 
thirty years. But as I gave myself up, for 
the moment, to the spell of the old record, I 
would have paid a good price for the power 
to read between the lines those meanings 
which make the life of any book. You have 
had similar experience with an old letter. 
Yellow with age and cracked at the folds, 
remembrancer of bygone passions and pains 
— how you puzzled and frowned or dreamed 
and went tender over it! At sight of the 
thing "memories that bless and burn" leaped 
into life again. But here a line held you 

53 



54 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

curious. The words were plain enough; 
their significance had faded more dismally 
than the ink. And you tore up the page or 
put it awav again with a sigh, wishing a 
competent interpreter were at your elbow. 
Thus one feels toward the fragment I 
bring you from Paul's correspondence: 
"Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this 
present world." Less than a dozen words, 
yet what a long story they could tell had 
we the key to them! Paul did not keep a 
diary as some of us have done — chiefly for 
the sake of "keeping it." More than once 
I have watched a chronic diary-keeper, pencil 
in mouth, scratching his head, trying to think 
of something to say for the day just closing. 
Be sure that Paul never made entries like 
this, for the sake of filling up a page. He 
might have used his own blood for ink — so 
vital to him was the record. And if we 
could know the truth, I am sure we should 
find Paul's heart hurting him cruelly, while 
he jotted down this item about the man who 
lost his dream. In a very reverent spirit, 
then, for the sake of the rest of us, I venture 
to read between the lines of this old letter. 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 55 

Demas: you notice that I have described 
him as "the man who lost his dream." I am 
perfectly safe in assuming that he had one, 
asleep or awake. No man can fall unless he 
has been up. Your friend must be your 
friend before he can break your heart. God's 
grief is not that we never come, but that we 
do not stay. Every man has his dream. He 
is, so to speak, amphibious. Like certain 
denizens of the deep, he is a creature of two 
elements. He cannot stay submerged in- 
definitely: he must come up to breathe. I 
mean that, as a son of the Eternal, he must 
give his soul a chance. 

O, we're sunk enough, God knows : 
But not quite so sunk that moments, 
Sure though seldom, are denied us 
When the spirit's true endowments 
Stand out clearly from its false ones. 

And I am thinking of those "sure though 
seldom moments" in which the soul rises to 
breathe. "There is a spirit in man." Carnal 
and material as he is on the under side of 
his nature, "there is a spirit in man." This 
is the world's tallest hope — this, and the 



56 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

assurance that God will some day get at 
every man. Yes, every man has his dream. 

Speaking of dreams reminds me that the 
world's estimate of the value of our sleeping 
fantasies has altered again. Time was when 
folks paid keen attention to dreams. You 
cannot read the Bible and leave out the 
dreams. Jacob's ladder at Bethel, Joseph's 
strange glimpse of his relation to his 
brothers, Ezekiel's wheels, Paul's sense of 
the need of Macedonia, were dreams. And 
some have gone so far as to affirm that man's 
first hint of immortality was given him by 
the reappearance, in dreams, of the loved 
and lost. People used to interpret their 
dreams with distressing literalness, harry- 
ing themselves accordingly, as some do still. 

Then came the age of rationalism when 
everything seemed in peril of being ex- 
plained, dreams included. Dreams were 
pathologically explained, in term of indiges- 
tion, or brain-storm, or what not. People 
reported their dreams merely to laugh at 
them, treated them as the inane vapors of 
unreality, signifying nothing for the soul. 

Nowadays we think differently again. 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 57 

Led on by such students as Myer, Hyslop, 
and Sir Oliver Lodge, we are almost inclined 
to admit that, after all, there may be some- 
what of value in our dreams. It is by no 
means certain that our brains ever rest. Indi- 
cations are that the subliminal mind works 
with most startling accuracy when we call 
ourselves "asleep." Enough marvels have 
been catalogued — missing articles located in 
sleep, mathematical problems worked out to 
perfect conclusions, telepathic messages, 
glints of light far too dazzling for daytime — 
marvels enough, I say, to make us dismiss 
the scientific sneer of a half century ago. 
Clairvoyance is not all charlatanism. Who 
shall dare set limits to the modes by which 
God makes his approach to the souls of his 
children? The universe is more spiritually 
fashioned and delicately set than we, as yet, 
are willing to allow. And I, personally, do 
not doubt that God, who employs sunsets and 
rainbows as teachers, who speaks through 
mountain silences and the lips of little chil- 
dren, may also make use of what we call 
"dreams." 

But just now I am thinking of dreams of 



58 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

a different sort. I mean the waking kind. 
I mean the kind of dream your sculptor 
must have before he sets his chisel against 
the marble, the kind every writer needs 
before he takes up his pen, the kind Jesus 
had as he fronted his cross. 

Every beautiful thing ever done on earth 
was a dream first. Raphael dreamed the 
Sistine Madonna, and his magical brush 
merely filled in the outlines of what Raphael 
saw in his soul. Men dreamed America 
while the Indians were still dancing their 
war-dances observed of no foreign eye. 
Edison dreamed the phonograph in spite 
of his incredulous mechanics. Burbank 
dreamed his white blackberry and his spine- 
less cactus against nature, so to say. And, 
on the other hand, the worst war of the ages 
is merely the coming true of the nightmare 
of militarism. 

A recent article on dreams brought me 
up standing. It says that, instead of being 
illogical, dreams are the most inexorably 
logical things in the world. Neither cautions 
nor conventions hinder us in our dreams. If 
you are on a roof and want to step down to 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 59 

the ground you do it in spite of Newton's 
laws. If your enemy annoys you you merely 
kill him, without regard to the Decalogue. 
If you love a woman you never bother about 
reciprocal affection — in your dreams. In 
our dreams we go where we like and return 
when we please, and neither Jack the Giant - 
Killer nor Aladdin with his wonderful lamp 
has anything on us. There is no such word 
as "impossible" in the vocabulary of dreams. 
And our daydreams — what of them? 
When his officers reminded him that there 
were mountains in his way, Napoleon re- 
plied, "There are no Alps." For the man 
who dreams bravely enough Alps sink at 
his approach. Many of the common advan- 
tages of modern life were called "impos- 
sible" once. But "impossibles" become glori- 
ously "possible" when men and women 
dream over them often enough! What 
statistician ever foresaw the wave of tem- 
perance sentiment which is sweeping over 
the world? Somebody dreamed — and kept 
on dreaming — and declined to wake up. 
Such dreams are the truest part of us. They 
indicate our holiest contribution to the world. 



60 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

We shall be judged at last by our fidelity to 
our dreams. Of old, the brothers of one 
Joseph sneered when they saw him ap- 
proaching: "Behold, the dreamer cometh." 
Just as contemporaries scoffed at Cyrus W. 
Field and his dream of an Atlantic cable; 
at Livingstone and his dream for Africa; 
at Jesus and his glorious dream for men. 
But Joseph, the dreamer, older grown and 
transplanted to a foreign soil, saved his prac- 
tical brothers and their father from starving. 
Whatever else one may do without, he can 
by no means do without his dream. No 
mother is fit to train her boy until she has 
dreamed great things over him. No man 
can run a business or build a bridge unless 
he has dreamed. If you have never yet 
idealized your friend, I doubt if he is worth 
having. Always the dream first — always the 
dream. And as to being a Christian — why, 
nobody can be one until God has given him 
a sunrise in his soul. You cannot follow our 
Lord until he has opened your soul. Jesus 
is the arch-poet of the ages. None other 
ever saw so much in men and women. The 
first thing he did for Peter and Zacchaeiis 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 61 

and the woman at the well was to share his 
dream with them. And the immortal min- 
istry of a converted Pharisee was simply 
the fulfillment of a certain dream which God 
gave on the Damascus Road. 

So, of course, Demas had his dream. I 
do not know the date and fashion of it, but 
he had his dream. He was a man, and to 
expect a man to make heaven without the 
grace of a great dream is as irrational as to 
expect a whale to live and not come up to 
breathe. 

But concerning Demas there is more to 
be said than merely that he had his dream. 
He lived it out in human terms, for a season. 
Twice the great apostle, writing from his 
Roman prison, refers affectionately to 
Demas. For a while his heart beat faster 
and his hands found no task too hard. I 
can guess how dear he became to his spiritual 
father. He trod the upper ways of his 
dream. And, so doing, he surpassed the 
achievement of some who have criticized him 
for falling away. O, the dreams that fade 
with advent of day! Have you waked in 
the morning trying to recall precisely what 



62 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

it was you dreamed about, and gone through 
the forenoon haunted by a sense of beauty or 
truth escaped? Very distinctly I remember 
how some sentences pieced themselves to- 
gether for me while I slept. I had dropped 
asleep trying vainly to make them fit, like 
a child puzzling over a desiccated map. 
Then, somehow, during the night, the whole 
thing came clear. I knew just how to do 
it, and I woke with a sort of sunrise in my 
heart, only to realize that the dream had 
gone. Shall I admit that, for weeks after- 
ward, I tried by any available handle to 
open my door upon the joy of that dream? 
I knew I had the dream. I know it now. 
It is as real as any other experience of my 
life. Yet not one word could I recall: 
merely the glow of the joy. 

But I am thinking of you and your 
dreams. Nor do I ask you to mention them 
aloud. All I want to do is to remind you 
of the wonder of them — and the tragedy of 
losing them. 

"There are noondays struck from mid- 
nights." You have had them. Sitting in 
the church, or walking the familiar pave- 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 63 

ments between home and office; over your 
newspaper or book, or in the house of mourn- 
ing; thrilling with the advent of a new love 
or broken with some unexpected pain, you 
have seen the heavens open as truly as ever 
Saint Stephen did. God sent you a great 
moment. He disturbed you "with the joy 
of elevated thoughts." He let you see 
where you stood and what you might be. 
He gave you your dream. I do not know 
that you can even recall just what you saw 
or felt. I am content to remind you of it. 
Do not assure me that you never had it. 
You are human. And I make bold to say 
that no child of the Eternal Father ever gets 
through the journey without some intima- 
tion of the Father's will, and some glimpse 
of the Father's face. O, if you had made 
use of your dream! 

Demas did — for a season; nobody knows 
just how long. His spiritual tragedy was 
quite different from yours. You never 
started in the way of your dream: Demas 
hit the trail and fell away. Once I had a 
toy engine which interested me keenly and 
disappointed me as bitterly. It looked as if 



64 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

it was made to run. It did run. But it 
seemed to me I was always filling the boiler, 
and lighting the lamp underneath, and get- 
ting up steam. I could hear the giant within 
crying for outlet. And soon the tiny piston 
was spitting white jets of power. For a 
minute or two the wheel ran briskly, then 
stopped. The event had passed. Always 
before I could belt the toy engine to any 
"contraption" the engine stopped. 

So in life. There are multitudes of 
Demases, always getting up steam, always 
starting merrily, and then quitting wearily. 
Think how many folks had a term or year 
of music lessons and could not play a hymn 
to-day. Think how many tables we learned, 
nor could tell the difference between apothe- 
caries' and Troy weight to-day. Think of 
the errands we started on for God and never 
fulfilled. Think of the programs adopted 
and torn up after a spurt of zeal. Think of 
the slaveries we escaped from and went back 
to. Think of the vows we began to perform 
and forgot. And then guess the patience 
of God! 

O, Demas, you have many comrades in 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 65 

your short run of loyalty! We can under- 
stand you. We are built after the same 
pattern. The saddest entries a pastor makes 
in his Church Record must be made with 
invisible ink. When a member of our church 
transfers his fellowship to some other church 
I know exactly what to put down opposite 
his name. If he formally "withdraws" I 
can indicate that fact in plain English. If 
he dies I chronicle the fact that the church 
on earth has given up one more to the 
Father's house. Provision for all these 
entries is made in our Book of Discipline 
and Order. But when a disciple of Jesus 
grows cold merely; and his prayer loses its 
ring; and his face no longer shines; and he 
quietly drops out of the ranks, what entry 
shall I make? None is authorized; none is 
permitted. All I can do is to write, with 
anguish, in the diary my heart keeps: 
"Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this 
present world." So far as we know Demas 
died a communicant of the early church. 
Maybe he did no great wrong to others: he 
merely forgot his dream. 

Just a moment remains for noticing what 



66 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

cost Demas his dream. It was the sin of a 
misplaced love. "Demas hath forsaken me," 
wrote his spiritual father, "having loved this 
present world." In other words, Demas had 
merely transferred his love from Paul to 
others, from God to the world. Love did it 
— misplaced love. Love accounts for all the 
tragedies as well as the felicities of life. Love 
weaves all the crowns of thorns as truly as 
the crowns of roses. Love is responsible 
for the sting not less than for the sweet- 
ness of life. All that a man has to do is to 
love the wrong things, or the right things 
wrongly. Hatred of good is the obverse 
side of love of evil. Scorn of God is a phase 
of an unworthy love of his creation. Demas 
misplaced his love — that was all. 

He loved the present world as if it were 
permanent. As soot spoils a flower, as 
avarice spoils a face, as discord spoils a song, 
so a wrong love spoiled Demas's dream. 
Worldliness means misplaced love. I am 
glad that Paul did not tell us what particular 
form of worldliness cost Demas his dream. 
We always get into difficulty when we at- 
tempt to define worldliness. Worldliness 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 67 

means loving the world and forgetting Him 
who gave it. I do not believe that anybody 
who accepts the world reverently can love it 
too well. 

"Having loved this present world." To 
some people that means theaters and cards 
and dancing, with a few other indulgences 
thrown in. If the case were as simple as 
that! Worldliness is an essence. You may 
find it under the monk's cowl as truly as 
under a fashionable hat. A man may take 
it to church with him as easily as to a theater. 
I have heard prayers that were as worldly 
as dancing. No place, no shrine, no soul is 
secure against its intrusion. And when it 
once gains admittance the dream is spoiled. 



THE MAN WHO FOUGHT 
THE STARS 

Fkamed in a window, near the close of 
this story, I catch sight of a woman's face. 
Unfortunately, I cannot make it out as I 
should like; the lattice partly hides it. 
Whether it is a face wrinkled and seamed 
with years, or young with that deathless fire 
which burns in some women's eyes, I cannot 
say. What matter? It is the face of a 
woman watching as women only watch — of 
a mother watching for her boy. Now and 
again she leans close to the lattice, and you 
may hear her plead, "Why is his chariot so 
long in coming?" Possibly she would have 
hidden, suddenly, could she have had her 
prayer answered. Women are strange — 
almost as queer as men are. Not for half 
a world would they let you know how fond 
they are, how much and how long they watch. 
Besides, some men are such poor miserable 

68 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 69 

curmudgeons they object to being watched 
for, as mothers will. 

But, O, the faces at the lattice! God be 
merciful to the boys who do not see the faces 
at the lattice ! I wonder if the "new woman" 
will strain her eyes and ears at the lattice as 
our mothers did. I wonder. The last look 
I had from my mother was one January 
morning, as she watched me down the street. 
The next time I saw her she could not see me. 
But I used to feel, miles away, amid college 
tasks and college temptations, my mother 
watching. And, somehow, that sense of 
being watched for — not "watched," but 
watched for — helped bring me home un- 
ashamed. And I do not hesitate to say that 
through the years since the morning she 
watched me down the street I have kept the 
solemn, sweetening sense of being watched 
for. Did Sisera put up a bigger fight, that 
ancient day, as remembering the face at the 
lattice ? 

But the boy the woman watched for never 
came. She never heard the familiar rumble 
of his chariot wheels. If the chariot came 
back, it came empty. By and by the anxious 



70 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

face disappeared from the window: there 
was no use to watch more. And another 
mother began the long vigil of grief for an 
unreturning son. I am to talk about the son 
who did not return. I am to try to tell you 
why he did not return. 

And before I say anything else about this 
man who fought the stars I want to speak a 
word of sorrow concerning him. We do not 
always remember to do that. We are so 
righteously pleased to see bad sons get their 
deserts we fail to share the sorrow of the 
face at the lattice. While Becker, the New 
York lieutenant of police, was on trial for 
his life I followed the case with a sort of 
vindictive fever. When the State scored a 
good point against him I applauded, in my 
soul; when Becker's lawyers scored I 
groaned. 'T would be a dreadful thing for 
such a criminal to escape the electric chair! 
Doubtless. (We are too slow and soft with 
lawbreakers in this country. ) But, one day, 
the realization swept in upon me that I had 
not spent a moment in being sorry for 
Becker; sorry that a man of such talents 
went so terribly wrong; sorry for the ordeal 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 71 

he must pass through; sorry that any son 
of God should come to such tragic end. I 
had been so keen to see justice done I forgot 
how justice feels to the man who suffers it. 
Such poor partners are we with God in 
redemption ! 

Honestly, did you never feel that the 
prodigal son's welcome was overdone? His 
stay-at-home brother has many admirers. 
We can understand his outburst of indigna- 
tion, for we often feel the same way toward 
prodigals, returning or unreturned. Not the 
best robe and the fatted calf, but corned beef 
and the penitent's stool — that is what he 
ought to get. Not a place in the sun, but a 
place in the dark. This spreading of feasts 
for home-coming exiles seems as hysterical 
as the sending of flowers and women's photo- 
graphs to condemned criminals. Nay, it is 
thoroughly bad morals. 

Was Jesus wrong, then? Either he was, 
or we are. Worse than that. If this ex- 
quisite parable, over which so many tears 
have been shed, and which has put heart 
back into countless derelict sons and daugh- 
ters of heaven, if this parable teaches the 



72 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

wrong way to treat penitents, then Christi- 
anity, in its essence, is a mistake. I recall 
the case of a bankrupt sinner who was 
soundly converted. Before conversion he 
had swindled royally, and then taken the 
poor debtor's oath, to escape his creditors. 
But just as soon as news of his conversion 
spread among them his creditors renewed 
their claims eagerly. Surely, a converted 
debtor ought to pay his debts. He ought, 
most assuredly. But, to me, there was some- 
thing ignoble in the scramble of those 
creditors for their money. The gospel is 
only incidentally a debt-paying affair. 
Primarily and fundamentally it is a message 
of inward redemption and reconstruction. 
It declares the infinite sorrow of God that 
any man or woman should go wrong. 
Deborah, in her famous song of exultation, 
might very naturally rejoice that the man 
who fought the stars had fallen. Jesus 
would have grieved that any brother of his 
should need to fall in order to Israel's 
safety. 

Shall I pause to say that we usually are 
sorry for the wrong people? One of our 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 73 

modern plays shows a group of roistering 
young folks starting out for an evening of 
merriment, but tarrying at the door long 
enough to wave a mocking good-by to the 
domestic drudge who must stay at home. 
In a shallow, half -contemptuous way, they 
were sorry for her, just as the bibulous man 
is sorry for the friend whose scruples make 
him decline, just as the lecherous man is 
sorry for his chaste brother. I suppose that 
the world outside the church feels very sorry 
for us within the church: we miss so much; 
our religious vows tie us up so short. And, 
what is worse, a good many of us have im- 
proved the occasion, to be sorry for ourselves. 
God forgive us! No man who walks with 
God is entitled to sympathy on that score. 
He is, rather, a silent candidate for the con- 
gratulations of two worlds. 

I can tell you whom to be sorry for. The 
man who has no scruples against taking a 
drink, and who takes one whenever he wants 
it; the woman who has so far outgrown 
prudishness that she accepts the world as 
she finds it; the neighbors who can lie with- 
out wincing and be cruel with compunction; 



74 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

in short, the folks who enter Sisera's fight 
against all the stars of God — these are the 
ones to be sorry for. Let us have done con- 
doling with the Christian who does not dare 
"come down." Let us send our prayers and 
our yearnings after the children of the plain. 
I am thinking of that face at the lattice, 
and of its anguish when the boy comes not 
back. That is God. And he invites us to 
share his sorrow over the lost sheep of his 
fold. 

But Sisera, the man who fought his un- 
equal fight against the stars, what of him? 
What sort of man was he, at heart ? Frankly, 
I do not know. Judging him by Deborah's 
exultation over his terrible fate, I might be 
disposed to class him with the reprobates. 
But, wait a moment. All we know against 
him is that he fought on the losing side. 
Certainly, he was not more ruthless than 
Barak, his conqueror; not so false as Jael, 
who slew him, and whom Deborah sang to 
the skies for the treacherous deed. Remem- 
ber the face at the lattice, watching. Per- 
haps she of the anguished face could say that 
no mother ever had kinder son, or braver. 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAD. 75 

This is the most we can say, that he fought 
on the wrong side. And some of the best 
men and women God ever made have done 
that. Robert E. Lee suffers not by com- 
parison with the noblest of his successful 
adversaries. Admiral Cervera was as gal- 
lant a sea-dog as Captain Philip. Men of 
equal loyalty and magnanimity are dying 
every day in opposing trenches. 

The old-fashioned way of classifying 
people is played out. When I was a boy 
I thought of Democrats with disgust. I 
could not conceive how any self-respecting 
citizen could vote the Democratic ticket. I 
thought of the South as all but sodden in 
sin: that explained the "solidity." My first 
awakening came with the discovery that the 
South felt in precisely the same way toward 
the North. You cannot even draw a straight 
line between the church and the world; the 
line is as irregular as the coast of Maine. 
Marcus Aurelius was a heathen monarch; 
Leopold of Belgium nominally a Christian. 
Cornelius the centurion was outside the 
church; Ananias and Sapphira were inside, 
Benedict Arnold was the same individual— 



76 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

so far as the census goes — both as patriot 
and traitor. We cannot draw the line. We 
cannot name all the saints, or all the sinners. 
We cannot assay men by the cut of their 
uniforms, or by the flag they fight under, 
or by their dialect. "Who art thou that 
judgest another man's servant? to his own 
master he standeth or falleth." "The Lord 
knoweth them that are his" — and he is the 
only one that does know. 

But this is not all there is to be said — 
that Sisera happened to fight on the wrong 
side. This also must be said: in a profound 
sense, no man is better than his cause. From 
the point I have just made you might infer 
that it makes little difference which side a 
man fights on — so long as he is honest. O, 
yes, it does. It makes every difference, save 
one, namely, that a man may fight on the 
wrong side and still be honest. All the other 
considerations emphasize the vast import- 
ance of fighting on the right side — not 
against the stars, but with them. 

It was long ago noted that dissipated men 
are often most lovable men. Mothers will 
tell you that it was the dearest child that 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 77 

went astray. The man who is damning him- 
self with drink or debauchery is often a man 
with a heart as big as an ox's and as tender 
as a woman's. Not the smug but the gen- 
erous; not the harsh but the all-loving — 
these help fill the ranks of the lost. If I 
had a favor to ask I could ask it more hope- 
fully, sometimes, from the man of whose 
habits I am ashamed. I mean that there is 
about him a largeness of soul I do not always 
discover among the saints. O, but when you 
stop to think, that difference serves to accen- 
tuate the pity that he should be serving the 
wrong master. What could not the church 
accomplish if it could save to itself, and for 
the service of its ideals, all those great hearts 
that have missed the luminous trail to the 
Father's House? 

You will hear it said that this neighbor 
or that is "too good for his business," that 
some particular saloon-keeper is "too good 
for the liquor business," or that some special 
sinner is "too good a man to do the things 
he does." I see the point. There is some- 
thing in it. But the truth cuts both ways. 
If a man is too good for the business which 



78 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

engrosses him, then he ought, by all means 
and at any cost, to get into some business 
worthy of him. If Michael Angelo was cut 
out for larger things than peddling peanuts, 
then he ought not stop short of finding the 
work God had for him to do. If Lincoln 
was too big and splendid for a dingy law 
office, then he must not stay there. If 
Phillips Brooks was too good for the busi- 
ness of sowing wild oats, then he must not 
engage in that business. For, soon or late, 
a man absorbs his business. He becomes an 
illustration of the things he does. He in- 
carnates his practices. "Know ye not," cried 
the great apostle, "that to whom ye yield 
yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye 
are to whom ye obey?" And, eventually, 
we wear the mark as we have worn the livery 
of our master. Nothing is more hopeless 
than the attempt to touch pitch without 
having it stick to you. 

"Can't I wear this dress into the mine?" 
asked a young woman, pointing to her white 
frock. 

"Well," came the quick reply, "there is 
nothing to prevent you from wearing that 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 79 

white dress in the mine, but it won't be 
white when you come out." 

Smile at her folly if you will, but remem- 
ber that you are smiling at yourself. We 
do things just as stupid, just as impossible, 
every day. We wear the garments of 
righteousness into unclean places — and then 
exclaim at the smut. We enlist against the 
stars and wonder that life is tragic. O, 
mother, with your face pressed against the 
lattice, the son you watch for will not come 
back. He may have been the best son in the 
world. How proud you were when his king 
promoted him to be captain of the host ! But 
he cannot come back. He was on the wrong 
side. 

For a moment, in closing, see what hap- 
pened. See what kept Sisera from going 
back to the eager face at the lattice. "The 
stars in their courses fought against" him. 
Needless to say, that is poetic explanation. 
The stars do not "fight" — either in their 
courses or out of them. I suppose Deborah 
referred to a thunderstorm which broke upon 
Sisera at the fateful moment, or perhaps 
to a shower of hailstones, such as helped 



80 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

Israel defeat the Philistines once; such a 
celestial interposition as scattered the Span- 
ish Armada upon the shores of England, 
or, according to legend, defeated Napoleon 
at Waterloo. Those were credulous days 
in which ordinary phenomena of nature were 
supernaturally explained. 

But here is the truth I am after — that 
even the stars in their courses, all the en- 
ginery of heaven and earth is confederate 
against the man who does wrong. Ours is 
a wonderful world. It is wonderful for its 
chemistry, for its geometric precision, for 
its vital processes. You cannot turn any- 
where without running against wonder. 
And 

"Every common bush aflame with God." 

But the most wonderful thing about the 
world is the moral purpose streaking it, 
as with veins of gold. "Nothing is more 
certain' ' (to adapt the famous lines of 
Spencer) "than that we are ever in the 
presence" of moral purpose. The world is 
pitched to good. Its movement is that way. 
And the man who does wrong is fighting 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 81 

the universe. The railroads had their day, 
and a long day it was. They fattened on 
injustice and piracy. Rebating flourished 
like the "green bay-tree." But 'twas a losing 
fight. The doom of iniquity is sealed as 
soon as it is begun. Not even Wall Street 
can successfully fight the stars in their 
courses. The American saloon has had its 
day. Alcohol, the world over, has reigned 
defiant and demonic. Who shall describe 
the fashion of its rule? But something ails 
the king to-day. The modern crusade 
against the traffic is merely the coalition of 
the stars. 

Men who are doing wrong, the way looks 

:asy! That is one reason you choose it: it 
looks so natural. You are misinformed. 
"The way of the transgressor is hard." 

'here is more hope of gathering figs of 
thorns than of winning out in a campaign 

>f evil. "The end of those things is death." 
You may have a good time for a season. 
You may even die crowned with fictitious 
crowns. But the silent stars are against you. 
All the inherent good of the universe is 
your enemy. You have God as your foe. 



82 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

Though he loves you with an everlasting 
love, still he is bound to defeat you because 
you are on the wrong side. 

I need not dwell upon the special tragedy 
of Sisera. Jael violated all laws, human 
and divine — save one — when she perfidiously 
drove the tent-pin into the temple of the 
exhausted Sisera. The one law she executed 
unwittingly, I suppose, was the law against 
fighting God. It does not so greatly matter 
how the end came to that doughty warrior. 
It had to come. He was fighting the stars. 



VI 



THE MAN WHO HOODWINKED 
HIMSELF 

It remained for our most strenuous and 
always interesting President to rescue 
Ananias from partial oblivion by naming a 
club in honor of him. We had already simi- 
larly honored other notables in the early 
church. We had brotherhoods named for 
Saint Paul and Saint Andrew; Dorcas 
Societies and Sisters of Mary. Now, at 
length, we have an Ananias Club with a 
large membership well distributed through- 
out the world. People who never read the 
story of Ananias in the Bible are familiar 
with his name. And some make alarmingly 
free to propose neighbors and others for 
membership in his club. In the interest, 
therefore, of accuracy and fairness it is sug- 
gested that we look into the matter a little 
further. It may subsequently appear that 
some supposed full members of the club are 



84 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

not even eligible to membership; and that 
others who count themselves outsiders should 
join at once — or mend their ways. 

You do not make a "soldier" by putting 
uniform on a man ; nor a true lodge-man by 
giving him the signs, grips, and passwords 
of the order; nor a scholar by paying his 
way through college; nor a Christian by 
teaching him a creed. Nor can you grade 
sinners by outward marks. Sin is a less 
clumsy, more elusive thing than that. It is 
always of the heart. Every member of a 
certain ancient order will instantly recall the 
moment in which he stood near a venerable 
altar, blindfolded, uncertain of foot, and 
answered this question: "Where were you 
first made a member of our Fraternity?" 
His answer was very simple — I wonder if 
he realized how profound. "In my heart," 
he said, "in my heart." 

Why, you never make a soldier or a states- 
man, a salesman or a Saviour, anywhere 
else. Always in the heart. This, I fear, is 
the trouble with some of our so-called 
friends: they were "made" in a restaurant, 
at a card-table, in a drawing room — not in 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 85 

the heart. It is the explanation of some un- 
happy women, alas, they were "made" 
mothers in hospitals or palatial chambers — 
not in the heart. Certainly it is clue to one 
tragic weakness of the church: we have so 
many members who were "made" Christians 
otherwhere than in the heart. You never 
know anybody until you know the heart of 
him. And while I recognize the perils of 
wearing your "heart upon your sleeve for 
daws to peck at," it is well to remember that 
in proportion as we succeed in concealing 
our hearts, we render ourselves unknown, 
either for praise or blame. 

From the physician's standpoint folks may 
be classified as sick or well. But the wise 
physician does not pause there. He calls 
one patient anaemic, another rheumatic, an- 
other typhoid, and another tuberculous. Nor 
does the wisest physician stop there. He 
knows that no two cases of the same disease 
are quite alike. Each has its individual his- 
tory, each its personal symptoms, each its 
special peril. This is the frequent despair as 
it is the eternal pique of medicine. Shall we 
hope to find the matter different when we 



86 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

study diseases of the soul? Easy enough to 
classify sick souls as liars and thieves, misers 
and prodigals, cruel and deceitful. Say that 
Edgar Allan Poe was a drunkard, and Lord 
Byron a rake, and great Dante a gambler. 
Call Benedict Arnold a traitor, and Louis 
XIV a despot, and Nero a tyrant. Open 
your Bible and put Pilate the coward, David 
the adulterer, and Cain the murderer in their 
respective classes. And when you have com- 
pleted your list you have not gone very far. 
There is a profound sense in which every 
transgressor belongs in a class all his own. 
Differentiation between microbes, under a 
powerful lens, is child's play as compared 
with the separation of man from man for 
the purposes of judgment on earth. But 
God can do it. He alone can do it. O, if 
we were oftener willing to leave to him the 
task! Warden Osborne, of Sing Sing 
Prison, in a recent address, showed how 
pitilessly inept is our penological scheme. 
Five years for burglary, twenty for man- 
slaughter, life imprisonment or the death 
penalty for murder — as if we could grade 
sins as we do coffee or cattle! One boy 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 87 

robs his employer's till to buy medicine for 
a sick mother; another boy takes the money 
to play the races. Both are thieves in the 
eyes of the law; both receive the same sen- 
tence, and spend the same number of dreary 
months behind the bars. By contrast, "O, 
the depth of the riches both of the wisdom 
and the knowledge of God." No wonder 
that David cried: "Let my sentence come 
forth from thy presence." Our wisest judg- 
ments are but clumsy approximations to the 
unerring, beautiful fairness of God. He 
reads the heart as we read ledgers and news- 
papers. 

But Ananias, the man who hoodwinked 
himself; how shall we classify him? Evi- 
dently, Roosevelt thought of this ancient 
unworthy as a typical case, else the famous 
club had been differently named. But to 
call Ananias a liar is about as vague as to 
call Frederick Douglass a Negro, or Poca- 
hontas an Indian, or Marcus Aurelius a 
Roman. Ananias was none of your common, 
low-bred falsifiers. With the ordinary un- 
truthful person Ananias would have been as 
much ashamed to confess kinship as you 



88 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

would with spies and bomb-plotters. Judged 
by the record, Ananias was a more than 
average good citizen ; and, but for the tragic 
event, he might have been remembered as a 
better than average churchman. He will 
repay our study, this man for whom Roose- 
velt named his club. 

In the first place, and superficially, 
Ananias was a man who failed to live up 
to his name. He had a beautiful name. 
But he failed to live up to it. It meant, 
"favored of God." Somewhere I read of a 
father taking his three motherless boys to 
the cemetery, and standing with them by 
their mother's grave. As the strange silence 
of the place crept into their breasts he bade 
them read their own names, cut beneath that 
of their mother's, on the stone. Then he 
warned them, "Lads, if you ever do any- 
thing to dishonor your mother's name, your 
own will be erased from the stone." Was it 
Jessie Dean's father who, in the Bonnie 
Briar Bush, struck from the Bible record 
his disgraced child's name? 

To have a good name and then to live up 
to it! I recall a home in which two proud 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 89 

young parents were showing me their new 
baby. Naturally, I asked the wee stranger's 
name. They had not been able to agree as 
yet. O, the sweet hurrying days of choosing 
a name ! — days in which no name seems won- 
derful enough to match the new wonder in 
a woman's arms. And I, spectator of their 
joy, ventured to suggest that in deciding 
upon a name they pick one for their boy to 
live up to. Not a pretty name perhaps, nor 
an euphonious, even; but a name which 
might command all the resources and faith 
of the bearer. So, at least, God gives us 
our names. Remember how he changed 
Abram's and Jacob's, and Saul's. I wonder 
if this is what the Book means when it says, 
"I have called thee by thy name; thou art 
mine." And John wrote rapturously about 
the "white stone" with the new name written 
within ; a name which none but God and the 
recipient knew. 

To live up to your name, I mean the name 
by which you are known to God. On earth 
they call you John or Will, Louise or Mary. 
What do they call you in the Lamb's Book 
of Life? No particular task to live up to 



90 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

the name your mother gave you — unless per- 
chance the name happens to be Theodore — 
meaning gift of God ; or Dorothy — also sig- 
nifying God's gift ; or some such challenging 
name. But to live up to the name God gives 
you — O, that takes all there is of a man or 
a woman. God's name for you involves his 
program for your life. It means you as 
God dreams over you. It holds his beau- 
tiful ideal. Bad enough to disappoint the 
mother who gave you your earthly name. 
Worse to disappoint the friends who, in love, 
call you by that name. But to disappoint 
God who called you by your celestial name 
— have you thought of the tragedy of that? 
Here in the Record is hint of the chagrin 
of Peter and his fellows when Ananias fell 
below his name. But who shall measure the 
grief of God? 

But to go on with my story. Ananias 
loved the "odor of sanctity." Indeed, I 
think that is exactly what he loved : he cared 
more for the "odor" than for the "sanctity" 
itself. The flower did not interest him: he 
enjoyed the perfume of it — as many a 
modern woman dotes on bottled extract of 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 91 

roses or violets, and would hardly cross the 
street to possess the blossoms. Thus some 
people patronize grand opera. Really they 
are bored, but they sit through whole even- 
ings of the masters, and with a benevolent 
look on their faces. Music is a fine art. 
Grand opera is perhaps the acme of music. 
To love great music is an index of culture. 
So they pay fabulous prices for seats, and 
immolate themselves for the time being, and 
"patronize" the opera. Thus some people 
love books. They like to have them around 
— unopened. I recall the obvious pride with 
which a friend of mine showed me his library. 
He had spent a small fortune upon those 
shelved treasures — particularly upon the 
bindings. What beautiful books they were 
— first editions, authors' imprints, and all 
that. And I do not think my friend had ever 
opened one of them except to examine the 
quality of the paper. He might just as well 
have done as they say one rich man did — 
bought the backs of the books and then 
locked the cases securely. 

So some people love goodness. They like 
the look of it, and particularly the reputa- 



92 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

tion of it. Doubtless it is the most respeo 
table, not to say admirable, thing in the 
world. It has a fixed currency, like the 
pound sterling. It opens doors, and evokes 
smiles, and makes certain a glowing eulogy 
at the end. Hence they love it — after a 
fashion. Indeed, I may say that it would be 
difficult to escape loving it — after a fashion. 
Goodness starts up the bells in our better 
selves. It flings rainbows athwart the most 
leaden skies. It makes things sprout in our 
souls. As Sinclair says of one of her char- 
acters: "The sound of that singing made 
Ransome feel noble: and there is nothing 
more insidiously dangerous than feeling 
noble." Similarly, the wind and whiff of 
goodness give us a "noble feeling." Like a 
child in a new suit of clothes we imagine 
everybody is admiring us. 

Here was Ananias's trouble. He had 
fallen in love with the aspect of goodness, 
as Henry VIII did with the portrait of his 
third wife. He saw other disciples selling 
their property and laying the price of it 
"at the apostles' feet." He heard the fer- 
vent "Aniens" of the spectators. He wanted 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 93 

to be known as belonging to the heroic class, 
and to hear his name spoken in praise. So, 
according to the Record, he sold a possession, 
and — but I must not run ahead of my story. 
Let me point another moral before I remind 
you what the man did with the proceeds of 
the sale. 

Notice, please, that Ananias was willing 
to pay something for a good reputation. 
Granted that he was more concerned about 
being known as a good man than with being 
a good man, still he was perfectly willing to 
pay for the advantage. And for that I 
yield him honor, for there are folks who sigh 
like tornadoes for goodness, and decline to 
pay a cent in self-denial. If they could be 
made holy overnight by miracle, so they 
would never want to take another drink, or 
perpetrate another fraud — and all without 
conscious expense to themselves — well and 
good. But, like a certain young man who 
scolds God, and recently flung the Bible 
across the floor because God does not make 
him stop drinking in spite of himself, so the 
people I am describing want to be good 
without bestirring their souls. 



94 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

Ananias was different. He was willing 
to pay a fairly generous price for the repu- 
tation, even, of piety. So, when he had got 
the price of a valuable piece of land, he 
"brought a certain part and laid it at the 
apostles' feet." And mingled with the satis- 
faction he had in doing a praiseful thing, 
was the sense of having driven a shrewd 
bargain. He had eaten his cake, yet had 
part of it left. He was like most of us. 
Some of us are willing to pay liberally for 
the sound and smile of religion. We really 
enjoy having our religious feelings played 
upon. We come to church, and sing the 
hymns, and help pay the preacher. Indeed, 
we thoroughly approve of the church as an 
institution — and would swear at our children 
if they played truant from Sunday school. 
I say "swear," for swearing is one of the 
personal pleasures some men decline to give 
up. Swearing, or a social drink, or sharp 
practices, or what you will! They buy 
supper tickets, and make subscriptions to 
this and that, and speak enthusiastically of 
the church, and even reverently of Christ. 
But there are some things they do not pro- 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 95 

pose to let go. So they keep back part of 
the price — as Ananias did. And the rest of 
us, the members of the church, how much 
better do we ? Of course we do not use pro- 
fanity, and we take communion, and we deny 
ourselves certain pleasures that we should 
like very much — very much indeed; but it 
is hard to go the whole way. We pay part 
of the price, and keep back the remainder. 
Would you give up also your grudges? and 
your bad temper? and your side-stepping 
of soul? 

But see what Ananias did. As I have re- 
marked already, he was not a common liar. 
He was not at all the prototype of certain 
gentlemen whom Roosevelt proposed for 
membership in the Ananias Club. The 
original Ananias would have scorned to tell 
a lie. By so much he was the superior of 
his wife. She lied outright when Peter 
questioned her about the transaction. 
Ananias said nothing, so far as the Record 
shows. He merely laid his pile at the 
apostles' feet, as if his gift were complete. 
He told no falsehood; he only acted it — as 
we often do. We have not yet become so 



96 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

Christian that we abhor acted lies. I do not 
mean that we are to tell everything we know, 
or all we plan, even by wordless admission. 
There are deceits as sweet and innocent as 
that practiced by Jesus, on the day of his 
resurrection, when as he neared the end of 
his walk with the two disciples, "He made 
as though he would have gone further." Our 
dear human Lord! He also wanted to be 
entreated. 

I am not thinking of any of the pretty 
falsehoods love tells because it is love. I am 
thinking of the falsehoods which cover our 
sins: lies of fear, lies of shame, lies of soul. 
And concerning such falsehoods we need to 
remember that they may be acted as truly 
as uttered. When some one spoke falsely 
concerning your friend or your Lord, and 
you said nothing in protestation, you shared 
the lie. When you accepted praise to which 
you were not entitled, and smiled, and looked 
the part, what was that? 

But I have not yet said the worst thing 
about Ananias's deed. He had lied to God. 
As Peter put it: "Ananias, why hath Satan 
filled thine heart, to lie to the Holy Ghost?" 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 97 

Bishop Goodsell used to tell of meeting my 
father, early one inclement winter morning, 
hurrying along the streets of New Haven 
as if life depended upon haste : and when the 
Bishop asked the reason for such haste, at 
such an hour, my father replied: "I am look- 
ing for a man who lied to the Holy Ghost. 
He promised me to be at the altar last night, 
and he was not there. He lied to God." 
And, friends, I am thinking of the false- 
hoods we have told God. Remember the 
time you were sick, and promised God that 
if he would spare you ... or your baby 
was dying and you made God a vow ; or your 
business was tottering, and you whispered to 
God. I do not know what you said. If I 
did I would not repeat it. All I am asking 
is if you have kept your word, or have lied 
to God. 

And the tragic sequel to the story of 
Ananias's sin. It is not necessary to dwell 
upon it. All sorts of explanations have been 
offered. Was it horror at discovery that 
struck him dead? I do not know. But he 
died, as no man ought to be willing to die — 
with a falsehood in his soul. 



VII 

THE MAN WHO DEFEATED 
HIS FRIENDS 

I doubt if the small child understands, 
ordinarily, why he is punished. He may 
aecept it with due meekness or comprehen- 
sible defiance, just as his elders accept their 
allotments of hardship ; but I do not believe 
he understands it. That his suffering has 
specific meaning is an idea which escapes him 
as totally as it sometimes escapes us under 
chastisement. Mind, I am not questioning 
the right or need of punishment. An un- 
whipped child is usually insufferable as a 
child, and impossible when he grows up. All 
I am saying is that he seldom understands 
why he is whipped; and that until he does 
understand, the real value of the punishment 
is lost. Meantime you will continue, doubt- 
less, to administer upon his person. And 
he will continue to submit in a more or less 
chastened spirit — chiefly because you are 
stronger than he. 

98 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 99 

Thus, apparently, Joshua felt when his 
soldiers came reeling back from their first 
battle at Ai. The obvious fact was defeat. 
His men had not been able to stand before 
their enemies. And in blinding bitterness 
of soul Joshua flung himself upon his face 
before the ark — just as we do in our first 
outbursts of grief or shame. All that Joshua 
knew, all he cared, for the moment, was 
pain. Then God gave the cue, as he will 
always do, soon or late, if we fling our hurt 
hearts before the ark of the covenant. God 
always explains. Not as we does he punish, 
in petulance or anger. Never, as we, for the 
sake of showing off superior strength. "His 
judgments are true and righteous alto- 
gether." Man with a wound in the soul; 
woman of sorrows who "break your bread 
with blinding tears," there's a reason. I do 
not pretend to name it for you; I do not 
even guess how soon God will let you know. 
All that I affirm is that the good God sends 
no child of his limping and bleeding for 
naught. Misery is by no means an evidence 
of the divine indifference. Rather it is sure 
indication that God is in his world. Whether 



100 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

one suffer for his own sin, as Achan did later 
in our story; or for the sins of another, as 
the soldiers did at Ai, remember, there's a 
reason. And one of the finest functions of 
a liberal education is to find that reason. 

Tradition gives to a falling apple, in a 
garden at Woolsthorpe, credit for hinting 
to Isaac Newton the universal law of gravi- 
tation. But suppose the famous mathema- 
tician had not been looking, or had been 
looking only as dogs look. You cannot teach 
laws to a dog. Let the same falling apple 
strike him on the head, and he may growl 
at the disturbance, or walk about the tree 
inquisitively, or change his place of repose. 
But not in a thousand aeons can you teach 
Newton's dog what God taught Newton that 
day. Man is different. He is a rational 
being, as we say. He asks questions. He 
demands the reason for a fact. He puts 
two and two together. He not only hears 
the thunder; he finds out why it thunders. 
He not only sees hair turn white with age or 
pain; he explains in terms of phagocytes 
and coloring matter the strange bleaching 
process. He feels some strange fire in his 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 101 

bones — of love or rage or jealousy — and he 
rests not until he understands what it means. 
That is part of the glory of being human, 
that, by dint of long training, and with God 
always giving broad hints, we finally learn 
to put two and two together. 

But what is the use of higher mathematics 
unless we learn to put two and two together 
in morals? I know some very wise people 
who cannot do that. At lunch table recently 
my host pointed across the room to a pros- 
perous-looking man whose name is a byword 
of reproach in the city. Married, father of 
grown children, bound by a hundred chains 
to a life of truth and honor — I forbear to 
offend your ears by details of his shameless 
life. Indeed, I refer to him merely as an 
instance of the man who can figure interest 
and discounts and all that, and cannot count 
up to three in morals. Life, for him, is a 
series of indulgences, unrelated and unevent- 
ful. It seems never to have occurred to him 
that for every sowing there is inevitable har- 
vest; and that "he that soweth to the flesh 
shall of the flesh reap." Byron once sang, 
with infinite bitterness: 



102 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

My days are in the yellow leaf, 

The fruit and flowers of life are gone : 

The worm, the canker, and the grief 
Are mine alone. 

But that sort of end is never of divine ap- 
pointment except as retribution. I wonder 
if in those dreary days of disillusion Byron 
ever took time to put two and two together. 
Even though he escaped the grim tragedy of 
reaping, somebody must reap his crops. A 
few times the curtain of mist lifts from Saint 
Helena to furnish glimpses of a man pas- 
sionately sad, unutterably broken and yet 
impressive in his decay, like Melrose Abbey. 
But Napoleon, crying out against the fates, 
was really lifting voice against himself. 
When some one reminded him that "man 
proposes and God disposes," Napoleon 
arrogantly replied, "I am he that proposes 
and disposes." O, that his lesson might 
have sufficed for our day! The same "mills," 
the same "gods" and the same fine flour of 
death, whether in the year 1815 or the year 
1915. 

But back to my story. When Joshua got 
up from his posture of grief and took time 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 103 

to look about, following the cue from God, 
he learned something which neither he nor 
we can afford to forget. He learned that 
tragedy usually has a moral root. It was 
not fate that defeated his soldiers before Ai. 
Nor were the troops themselves blame- 
worthy. Survivors of that first ineffectual 
charge went up against the same enemy, 
next time, in triumph. 

Meantime something was morally wrong. 
Under a tent, within the Hebrew lines, were 
fresh marks of a spade. And beneath the 
hastily replaced earth was Achan's hoard, 
buried there in defiance of express command. 
Gold, silver, and a beautiful Babylonish 
garment, hidden away, for the present, by 
one man's covetousness — that was all. But 
somehow, in consequence, the man's friends 
marched up to defeat and back in dismay. 
Somehow, in the providence of the good 
God, Achan's evil unfitted his comrades. 

The moral roots of tragedy — I do not be- 
lieve that the laws of cohesion or sound are 
more plainly demonstrated. While the Rus- 
sian armies were falling back from one city 
after another in 1915, all the world won- 



104 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

dered ; the same world that had wondered at 
their victorious sweep a few months earlier. 
Then the truth leaked out, as truth some- 
times will, in spite of the censor. Bureau- 
crats were haggling over commissions and 
holding up army contracts. Nothing to 
them that their brothers should needlessly 
die, and Russian arms should suffer shame, 
as compared with the advantage of addi- 
tional roubles in the vaults of the money- 
changers at home. O, thrice perfidious men 
— false to your country, your brothers, and 
yourselves ! I wonder if the world will ever 
know the grim moral roots of a hundred 
disasters in the war? 

For that matter the war itself has moral 
roots. I do not presume to dig them up to 
view — whether in the conduct of Servia, or 
the land-hunger of Austria, or the revenge- 
fulness of France, or the hauteur of Eng- 
land, or the megalomania of Germany. Let 
God say, in his own time and way. All I 
am saying is that a upas tree which has 
scattered its deadly seeds across a continent 
must grow from a moral root. And the final 
reckoning for the crime will be, not at the 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 105 

banks and increased taxes, nor yet in terms 
of human suffering, but before the Great 
White Throne. Somebody sinned vastly. 
Perhaps the sin took a hundred years to 
ripen. But the fearful slaughter is the ter- 
rible harvest of sin. "Sin when it is finished, 
bringeth forth death." 

Or see this truth in narrower fields. Once 
Mirabeau, in some respects the finest prod- 
uct of the revolutionary era in France, rose 
to address the Chamber of Deputies. And 
his auditors, accustomed to his furious in- 
vective, braced themselves for the assault. 
For once, however, he seemed to falter. His 
voice went suddenly weak, and he, after a 
pitiful attempt to recover himself, sank con- 
fused and humiliated into his seat. Faint- 
ness? Stage fright? Unpreparedness? No, 
none of these: merely the Nemesis of an 
old sin which, as he confessed later, seemed 
to rise out of the shadows and personate 
itself accusingly beside him. His public dis- 
comfiture was the bitter reaping for sowing 
the wind. 

Into the home of a young couple, for 
whom I performed the marriage ceremony, 



106 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

came a little child, eagerly looked for and 
greeted with joy. But, alas! the joy died 
on the lips of the parents. And when, a 
year later, the baby died, even the parents 
had to say, humbly, "Thank God." The 
baby was hopelessly blind from birth — ter- 
rible penalty for somebody's sin. I do not 
name the transgressor : I do not know. But 
all of us know, or ought to know, that con- 
genital blindness almost invariably argues 
somebody's sin. Do not ask me why an inno- 
cent baby should be cursed for a fault not 
its own. Nor ask me why a father and 
mother, guiltless perhaps as our first par- 
ents, should be compelled to break their 
hearts. Ask me, rather, why our race is so 
marvelously one that every harvest must be 
gathered, whether for happiness or shame. 
Ask yourself if, taking all things into 
account, you could even imagine a better 
world. 

Mind you, I have no salt for wounds, 
save as salt may help heal. It is not in my 
heart to afflict those who have already suf- 
fered enough. I do not even intimate that 
you sowed the seed of the tragedy which has 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 107 

riven your heart, or broken your fortune, or 
desolated your home. All I venture to say 
is that the real root of the tragedy is pre- 
sumably moral. Blighted bodies, wrecked 
fortunes, shattered faith, sundered friend- 
ships — these, with all other bitter blooms of 
earth, spring from sowings of sin. 

And so we come back to Achan for a 
second lesson: the apparent disproportion 
between the fault and the penalty. If Achan 
could have paid the full penalty himself! 
In that case we might offer no objection. 
But, think of it! On the one hand a pile of 
unrighteous booty hidden under a tent; on 
the other hand a defeated army. God need 
not have taken out of the skins of scores or 
hundreds of innocent men the price of one 
man's sin. The effect seems altogether out 
of proportion to the cause. So we constantly 
feel in the presence of life's major tragedies. 
For example, the Baltimore fire. I do not 
at the moment recall, if indeed I ever knew, 
where the responsibility for the disaster was 
placed — whether in some piece of obvious 
carelessness, or in a defective wire, or where. 
No matter. The blame was personal. In 



108 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

the last analysis somebody was at fault. And 
the terrible harvest of flame seems quite out 
of proportion to the seed of wrong. Or the 
Lusitania! Whether you blame Von Tir- 
pitz, or a submarine commander acting con- 
trary to orders, or the agent of the line, or 
the captain of the great ship — or the man 
who really started the war, you must blame 
somebody. Guilt is never impersonal. Some- 
body sinned. And the event seems too big 
for the cause. Or take the case of the 
epidemic which raged through my parish 
one winter, claiming as victims one in each 
hundred of the city's population. Out of 
the angry investigation which followed, one 
fact stood clear as day — that the scourge was 
unnecessary and inexcusable. Somebody 
was to blame, either the magnate who owned 
the water supply, or an unnamed patient, 
the germs of whose ailment found their way 
into the reservoir. Somebody to blame. But 
by what right should an entire community 
pay in dollars and pain for one man's sin? 
Take the truth anywhere you will, and 
you find the same instinctive outcry against 
it. But tell me: if you wanted to mend 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 109 

things, where would you begin? The same 
law that, in its operation, yields such har- 
vests of death and woe also guarantees all 
generous fruitage of courage and kindness 
and self-denial. How are you going to im- 
munize the world against hurt and not at 
the same time make it immune to blessing? 
If you sterilize the soil of your garden, you 
render it as incapable of bearing wheat and 
roses as of growing ugly harvests of weeds. 
This law of God which assures the farmer 
"thirty, sixty, a hundredfold" for every 
grain he plants, is no less divine when it 
gives big crops to single seeds of sin. Would 
you prefer a harvest-law that promised two 
potatoes only for each whole one planted? 
The whole truth of pasteurized milk is this: 
that by the process you have destroyed both 
the good and the bad germs. Pasteurized 
milk is, in some respect, more dangerous 
than the natural fluid. It has lost its law. 
Will you have life "pasteurized," made 
"fool-proof," as we say, or as God intended 
it — and as God will doubtless keep it, what- 
ever our mood? Better accept the universe 
as we find it, making it better as we may, 



110 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

but falling in reverent wonder before its 
processes. 

And what is more important, may the 
good God help us to sow those seeds only 
of whose reapings we shall have no occasion 
to be ashamed, either in our own lives or in 
the lives of others. Says Francis Thomp- 
son: "Thou canst not stir a flower without 
troubling a star." No man sins except as 
making harder the battle of every human 
brother. Soldiers on the firing line feel their 
weapons turn in their hands while the guilty 
hoard lies in Achan's tent. 

And this brings us back to Achan, the 
man who defeated his friends. Unfortu- 
nately, or otherwise, there is not much time 
left to study the man. All I can do is to 
name his sin. An eminent priest says that 
every sin in the catalogue has been confessed 
to him — all except one. He says that no- 
body ever yet confessed to him the sin of 
covetousness. So specious, so deadening, so 
like the "father of lies," is the sin of Achan. 
By the way, Achan did confess, whereas few 
of us will ever admit to ourselves our fault, 
if the fault is cupidity. His neighbors 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 111 

shuddered when Richard Croker once ad- 
mitted that he was "in business for his own 
pocket all the time." It was so brutal. We 
prefer softer names for certain sins. But 
I wonder if in the world there is a more 
destructive sin. Tally is constantly fur- 
nished us of the victims and havoc of alcohol. 
Statistics are given to indicate the wide- 
spread results of certain "social sins" — so 
called. But I do not think anybody has 
ever attempted to figure the loss of some 
of our gains. Sweatshops, crowded alleys, 
squalid tenements, starvation wages, brother 
against brother — and a subtle poison every- 
where — these represent the bitter harvest of 
greed, 



VIII 

THE MAN WHO ADJOURNED 
THE MEETING 

Some one says that the execution of Edith 

Cavell, in Belgium, was worth a million 

men to England. That is to say, the moral 

heat begotten of that deed fused more 

patriotic purposes, and rallied to the colors 

more laggards than could be secured by a 

hundred Parliamentary calls. Not because 

the victim happened to be a woman, nor 

because her previous ministry to men of all 

flags had been so Christlike, nor yet because 

all appeals for clemency were apparently 

disregarded, but because she was denied a 

right we hold as sacred and inviolable as the 

throne of God — the right to a "day in court." 

Let it appear that Miss Cavell had her day 

in court, and we may choke back the residue 

of our anger at the manner of her taking 

off. These are days in which human blood 

runs in torrents. Hers was not more sacred 
112 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 113 

than others. But printed in letters of fire 
in our Constitution, and wrought up with 
the holiest fibers of our natures, is the con- 
viction of the right to a day in court. Not 
even the worst criminal forfeits it. Between 
his crime and his expiation of it, one day is 
his — his day in court. 

I speak of it now merely for the sake of 
reminding you that God always gives it. 
From him we got the idea. The sanctity I 
speak of grows from a seed dropped out of 
heaven. The soil may be human, but the 
seed is divine. Plato taught that every 
earthy thing — a flower, a face, an institution 
— is an approximation to or a poor copy 
of a celestial idea. In this instance the 
famous Athenian was gloriously right. Our 
guarantee of a day in court is meager 
adumbration of the right which God vouch- 
safes every pilgrim of the ways of earth. 
Our calm or fevered insistence upon such 
claim, at the hands of men, is merely our 
earthly assertion of a right which God never 
denies. Reverently I assert that God could 
better afford to admit to paradise every 
"Tom, Dick, and Harry," washed and un- 



114 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

washed, than to let the veriest vagabond 
miss his day in court. If necessary, a second 
probation, and a third, and a tenth, rather 
than hurry one soul into despair, without 
chance to face his accusers, and know the 
charges, and say his best word for himself. 

But Felix — the man who adjourned the 
meeting — I am thinking of him, and of how 
wonderfully God gave him his day in court. 
Felix was pretty thoroughly bad — measured 
even by the lax standards of his own time. 
He was a worse man than any to whom I 
am speaking. In actual conduct, if not in 
essence, he would outclass any sinner of our 
city. He was cruel, rapacious, false. In 
short, he worked out on regal scale all the 
vices of his slave-nature. I have reread his 
story, with hope of hitting upon some re- 
deeming trait. And I confess with pain 
that I have not found it. I am certain it 
must have been there, only I have not found 
it. Yet, God gave Felix his day in court: 
Felix the blood-thirsty, Felix the crook, 
Felix the dissolute — even to him God gave 
a chance. 

Shall I pause to remind you what a dif- 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 115 

ferent world this would be if we became 
proficient in the practice of God's way with 
offenders? We are so pitilessly quick to 
condemn. Doubtless the exigencies of war 
may sometimes justify the use of a "drum- 
head court-martial"; but the exigencies of 
everyday life never do. Miss Cavell had far 
greater respite than we commonly grant 
transgressors of our personal plans and con- 
ventions. I am not likely to forget the 
scalding letter written me by a man whom 
I had "read out of the church," so to speak. 
He had been accused of shameful fault. 
Scandal threatened. And after anxious 
conference with certain officials of the 
church, I sent him word that he must resign 
his Sunday school class at once. I did not 
name the allegation. I assumed that, being- 
guilty, he knew. And this is part of his 
reply: "You have constituted yourself 
judge, jury, and prosecuting attorney, and 
have found a verdict without giving me one 
day in court." 

It was true. I had done just that. Pos- 
sibly, in the same circumstances, I might 
be tempted to do the same thing again. God 



116 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

knows I had no spleen against the man; I 
was trying to save the church. But think 
of the possible hurt to another's soul. And, 
then, ask yourself if in the ordinary relation- 
ships of personal life, such a hurt is ever 
warranted. The guiltiest man you know has 
an inalienable right to his day in court. 
Siberia is a sunny clime as compared with 
the bleak lands to which, without chance to 
say a word on their own behalf, we exile our 
brothers and sisters. Maybe your friend 
was as false as you called him. Maybe he 
deserved every bitter thought you have given 
him. Maybe he knows why the grass has 
grown on the path between his door and 
yours. Are you sure ? Did you give him his 
day in court? Have you heard all he had 
to say for himself, as you in his place would 
have claimed right to say it? Perhaps. But 
I do not hesitate to say that we have flung 
away friendships which might be ours still, 
had we given the accused friend his day in 
court. Once the notion took John Buskin 
to build a chalet in Switzerland. But the 
coveted chalet was never built. As soon as 
he began to negotiate for land neighbors 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 117 

became suspicious. The more they thought 
about it, the more sure they became of some 
ulterior motive on his part. Probably he 
had located a gold mine or a coal vein on 
the premises. So they put the price up, until 
Ruskin relinquished his plan. O if dreams 
of Swiss chalets were the finest things spoiled 
by the breath of poison! Reputations 
blasted, hopes sunk in midnight, homes shat- 
tered, hearts driven mad with agony — these 
are the higher toll. And think of the loss to 
ourselves. 

They threw a stone, you threw a stone, 

I threw a stone that day: 
Although their sharpness bruised his flesh, 

He had no word to say. 

But for the moan he did not make 

To-day I make my moan : 
And for the stone I threw at him, 

My heart must bear a stone. 

But suppose we always gave the benefit 
of a day in court? Would failure to take 
advantage of it prove the accused one guilty 
"as charged"? Tradition has it that one of 
our most conspicuous public men bore to 
his grave the stain of a sin not his own. At 



118 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

least, he never refuted the slander, even when 
he seemed likely to miss the White House. 
If he was innocent, why didn't he speak? 
That would have been the easy thing to do. 
He never did it : and to this day most people 
assume his guilt. But in the neighborhood 
of a former parish lives a woman whose name 
you would instantly recognize were it called, 
a woman who says that he took the blame to 
shield another man — and carried the blame, 
unwhimpering, to his grave. Ah, friends, 
sometimes denial is not the greatest use to 
make of your day in court. Sometimes to 
seal one's lips, to let the court do its worst, 
and to carry out into the open day or into the 
blackest cells another's secret, is to be most 
like Jesus Christ, who, challenged, "answered 
to never a word." 

But Felix and his day in court. What a 
scene it was! Tradition says that the hall 
was marble, part of the splendid guilty 
palace which great Herod built, and within 
which he passed sentence upon his own sons : 
where Salome danced the voluptuous, deadly 
dance that cost John his head; and where 
Herod Agrippa "breathed out his hypo- 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 119 

critical soul." "From the days of Herod 
downward blood stuck to every stone.' ' In 
such brilliant setting God gave Felix his day 
in court. Felix? I suppose that, offhand, 
you would pick Paul as the man on trial. 
At least Felix was in the judge's seat and 
Paul in the dock. But as the great apostle, 
with burning heart and throbbing utterance, 
poured out his great story, the haughty man 
in the imperial seat went white and weak. 
Paul knew his man — and the guilty, beau- 
tiful woman at the procurator's side. For 
that matter, all Jerusalem knew, and rolled 
the wretched scandal under its tongue. It 
was not necessary to mention names. It 
rarely is. God's law is terribly personal. 
All Paul needed to do was to reason of 
"righteousness, temperance, and judgment 
to come," and "Felix trembled." I fancy 
Drusilla's lip curling. When a woman is 
bad she is harder and more brazen than a 
man is. But Felix could not have kept from 
trembling if the whole Roman Senate had 
been present. Felix's soul was answering. 
God was giving Felix his day in court. 
As he constantly does. If you had the 



120 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

misfortune to read May Sinclair's volume, 
The Confused Maze, you will remember the 
fateful moment in which the man, stumbling 
his way upstairs, followed the beam of the 
beckoning candle. And the door shut. And 
it was inky black in the hallway. And you 
knew that another son of God had gone 
wrong. But do you recall, also, the vast 
soul-sickness which came to the man next 
day? Somehow he shrank from himself — 
as a man always does in frank sight of his 
sin. Daytime mocked him. Innocent birds 
seemed to be scolding him. Life tasted bad. 
Ah, yes, God was trying to give him his day 
in court: the good God, the all pitiful God! 
Some one describes a visit to Benedict 
Arnold, in Paris, and the unutterable 
hunger in the traitor's eyes. O, if he could 
only come home! Asked if there was any- 
thing he wanted, he replied, infinitely sad, 
"Only a friend." The wages of sin: first 
thirty thousand dollars, and the praises of 
England for betraying West Point: then 
flight over seas, and exile, and loneliness, 
and the ashen "apples of Sodom." And 
God! Somehow one never travels far and 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 121 

fast enough to escape God. And even re- 
morse is God's way — one of his ways — of 
giving the transgressor his day in court. 
When Arnold asked if it would be safe for 
him to return to America, his visitor said, 
sadly, "No." His outraged countrymen 
would never give him a day in court. But 
God would. God did. 

Did you ever have a little child look you 
in the eye and ask you a question that 
searched you like light and fire? "Are you 
a good man?" "Why don't we have a bless- 
ing at the table in our house?" O, the dis- 
turbing questions of God's small messengers ! 
Sometimes 'twould be easier to pass through 
the third degree in a police court than to 
submit to the guileless cross-examination of 
a child. I mention it merely as another in- 
stance of the ways God has of giving to his 
wayward children their day in court. 

But how shall I hope to suggest, even, 
all the multitudinous ways and the multi- 
farious voices of God — and all of them 
merciful? Let us have done thinking of God 
as a ubiquitous Pinkerton Service, trying 
to catch us in wrong. Let us rather think 



122 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

of him as standing for our day in court; 
guaranteeing the veriest rascal a chance to 
rise to the dignity of saying, "Father, I 
have sinned." The trembling of Felix was a 
sign. It was a sign of God at hand, as surely 
as the trembling of the horse in the neigh- 
borhood of wild beasts, or the trembling of 
the bird under the eye of the snake, is a way 
of divine protection. Indeed, I sometimes 
fancy that there is no real "trembling" save 
that which attests the proximity of God. 
Again and again the Bible speaks of the 
trembling which God sends upon his dis- 
obedient people. God made Felix shiver in 
the seats of the mighty as Paul "reasoned 
of righteousness, temperance, and judgment 
to come." And that trembling which made 
Drusilla's lip curl with scorn was yet big 
with a mighty hope — if Felix had only 
known ! 

Indeed, there is always such difference 
between the trembling God sends and other 
tremblings. God never scares in wanton- 
ness. He never frightens for the sake of 
frightening. If he sends us quaking, it is 
that he may drive us home, or to his arsenals. 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 123 

Suppose that Edith Cavell had been granted 
the right which we fear she was denied? 
Suppose that Von Bissing had given her 
her day in court. Perhaps the best she could 
have done would have been to confess her 
guilt. At least, a certain human scruple 
would have been met. But God is never 
satisfied after that fashion. What he wants 
is not merely to see us get fair play; he 
wants to see us made over. And though we 
must pay, in suffering and tears, the utter- 
most farthing of our debt to the moral law, 
God is never satisfied if we miss the re- 
making of our souls. Opinion has been 
generally divided as to whether Becker's 
lawyers did well in restraining him from 
testifying in his own behalf. Guilty or 
innocent, he might have secured a different 
verdict. But very reverently I maintain 
that even such a result would have interested 
God little as compared with the redemption 
of Becker himself. 

O, we have not yet entered into the heart 
of God! We want a man to have chance 
to declare himself innocent, for the sake of 
his family and friends. God wants him to 



124 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

have opportunity to confess himself guilty, 
if must be, for the sake of his soul. I do 
not know that Paul would have enjoyed 
seeing Felix made over. Paul was a man; 
and sometimes it is pleasanter to let the 
damned stay damned. But we are talking 
of God. And when we talk of him we need 
to change our measures. Do you believe 
God thought a great deal of Paul and very 
little of Felix? How many lovable ones 
were in the apostolic company? Man, man 
alive, man whom God calls to eternal years, 
what were our hope if Jesus came to call 
the righteous, only, to repentance? 

I have seen a mother shake her child until 
my heart went hot. "I'll teach you," she 
says. Teach him what? Teach him that she 
is stronger than he? And when he grows 
up he may adopt the code of certain Euro- 
pean powers. God is different. Yes, I have 
seen him shake his disobedient child. That 
is the significance of Felix's trembling: God 
was shaking him, but not ruthlessly, only 
that Felix might turn from darkness to-day. 
When the flowers faded, and the wine soured 
on the lips of Lord Byron, what ? Why, God 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 125 

was trying to rebuild Byron. When Lord 
Wolsey saw the stars go out, and felt his 
heart grow cold in his breast, what? Retri- 
bution? Yes, if you please, but more than 
that: God seeking another chance with a 
broken man. When your ship comes not in, 
and your lights burn low, and 

A bolt is shot back somewhere in your breast, 
And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again; 

depend upon it, God is trying to get at you 
in redemption. 

But Felix ! Just as his own soul began to 
sigh and sob in answer to the pleading of 
God, Felix adjourned the meeting. I 
wonder if he felt himself letting go. 

Lord Peterborough, in the presence of 
Fenelon, confessed: "If I don't get out of 
this I shall become a Christian in spite of 
myself." It is very dangerous to live neigh- 
bor to God — I mean dangerous to your sins. 
You never can tell when he will get at you. 
Church is dangerous : good men and women 
are full of menace to you. And sunset bells, 
and evening star, and innocence in the faces 
of little children, and books, and hymns, and 



126 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

all the rest. Felix is never entirely safe 
against the intrusion of God. God slipped 
in with Paul. And when things began to 
be uncomfortable in Felix's soul he ad- 
journed the meeting. He said : "Go thy way 
for this time: when I have a convenient 
season, I will call for thee." He thought 
he was saying it to Paul, but he said it to 
God. 



IX 

THE MAN WHO DROVE HARD 

Memory has a curious law of fixation. In 
technical terms we call it the "law of associa- 
tion." But people who never opened a text- 
book on psychology, and would hesitate to 
spell the word, make use of the law every 
day of their lives. Thus, for example, I 
remember a certain parishioner as the man 
with the withered hand, and another by the 
thickness of his eyeglasses, and still another 
by his old-fashioned high boots. On the 
other hand, a certain well-known brand of 
soap sets my thoughts traveling to one of 
my classmates who persistently advertised its 
merits. In these years intervening he has 
done some fine writing, and has represented 
our nation in foreign capitals ; but somehow 
I always associate him and this particular 
soap. One suggests the other. So when we 
want to fix a person in memory we note the 
peculiarity of his nose, or the twang of his 

127 



128 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

voice, or the hitch in his gait. Forgetting all 
else, we remember him by that. 

Not essentially different is the working of 
the world's memory. Grant with the inevi- 
table cigar stuck in his mouth, Landseer with 
a dog at his heels, Cleopatra holding the asp 
against her white breast are samples. Even 
the nicknames of history tell the same thing. 
We call one man William the Silent, another 
Charles the Bald, another Richard the Lion- 
Heart. The name Henry VIII suggests 
too many wives, and Henry III (of France) 
the dandy and collector of monkeys, and 
Csesar unbounded ambition. We go so far 
as to personate certain virtues, and talk 
about the "patience of Job," or the "meek- 
ness of Moses" or the "courage of Daniel." 
To all men and all ages Shylock means 
greed, Hamlet indecision, Othello jealousy. 
Other qualities had they for which we might 
have given them our love. But with strange 
intuition the world has hit upon, and is 
pleased to remember them by, single out- 
standing traits. 

So with Jehu, the man who drove hard. 
His name has become a proverb. To say of 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 129 

a modern chauffeur that he "drives like 
Jehu" is to describe him well enough, and 
to warn pedestrians from the path of his 
machine. I do not know that fast driving 
was Jehu's redeeming virtue or besetting sin. 
Perhaps he never thought of himself in that 
role. But one day, as his chariot thundered 
up the highway, horses red nostriled, the 
driver hanging forward over their flanks, 
and in his wake a perfect storm of dust, the 
watchman called from his eyrie on the 
walls: "The driving is like the driving of 
Jehu . . . for he drive th furiously." I 
accept the likeness as correct. And I believe 
it furnishes clue to God's use of the man. 

For God did use him — this man who drove 
hard. Sometimes God needs a man who 
drives hard. That is not to say God admires 
him. I do not find intimation that God 
"liked" him, merely the plain fact that God 
chose him and used him for a rough place in 
history, as he constantly finds work for 
instruments we call unlikely. What else will 
you make of Providence? Well enough for 
us to insist that Thomas Carlyle should also 
be a sort of parlor ornament; and that 



130 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

Abraham Lincoln ought to have been more 
careful of his personal appearance ; and that 
Thomas Edison might very properly keep 
back his venturesome hand from the ark of 
the covenant. When Paderewski first came 
to this country some people had his music 
spoiled for them by his absurdly long hair, 
just as you will find citizens who, in heat 
against certain characteristics of him, can 
hardly admit that Theodore Roosevelt ever 
did a fine thing. O, that we were half as 
quick to recognize the good in men as to 
pick upon their obvious limitations ! Fortu- 
nately, God is different. He knows how 
to use, he is divine enough to be willing to 
use, "the stone which the builders rejected." 
Throughout the ages you find him doing it. 
This is the romance of Providence. 

If Rembrandt had waited for a perfect 
brush and unfading pigments, we had gone 
without his famous "Night Watch" and his 
tender "Cowper Madonna." If Oliver 
Cromwell had been willing to use only full- 
fledged saints in his army, Charles's head 
might have stayed on his shoulders and 
tyranny stalked England for another hun- 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 131 

dred years. If Jesus had declined to commit 
his gospel to narrow fishermen and reclaimed 
publicans, who would have forwarded to us 
the good news? And God? This is the 
wonder of God: that he "hath chosen the 
weak things of the world to confound the 
things which are mighty. And base things 
of the world, and things which are despised, 
hath God chosen, yea and things which are 
not, to bring to nought things that are." 
God be thanked for his ability to take any 
man for what he is, and use him for all he is 
worth, even if at the end of the chapter the 
man himself disappears in a gust of tragedy 
and mists of tears. 

Some day a man falls : a much-loved man, 
perhaps; mayhap a minister. For a day or 
a week the atmosphere has a fetid or acrid 
taste. Our breath catches somewhere, at 
mere sight of the fall, as when a workman 
drops from his perch on a scaffolding. At 
many a street corner foul-nosed dogs, scent- 
ing carrion, are snarling. Overhead the 
buzzards of reputation are screaming. And 
what is there to say? This, first: "Let him 
that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he 



132 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

fall." Not in the same dreadful way, but in 
some way or other. There are so many ways 
of falling that none can afford to plume 
himself on possession of a steady head. 
"Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault" 
— the Scripture does not name any limits — 
"ye which are spiritual, restore such an one, 
in the spirit of meekness ; considering thyself, 
lest thou also be tempted." That is the 
first thing to say — that there are many ways 
of falling. 

And the second is this: that when a man 
falls he weakens the hold of his brethren 
everywhere. No man can sin to himself. 
We are members one of another. Whoever 
does wrong flings a firebrand into the camp 
of his friends. None drops out of his place 
in the line but to disturb the entire line. 
Are there not foes enough without having 
our friends betray us? O, if we could re- 
member this: that our perfidy, our dis- 
honesty, our uncleanness of life makes the 
weapon of every comrade turn soft in his 
hand ! These men who airily assure you that 
it is nobody else's business what they do, 
what are they talking? The most arrant 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 133 

nonsense, the most pestilent falsehood ever 
spoken. It is my business whether my 
brother walks worthily or not. It is equally 
his business what sort of work I make of my 
life. We are partners, he and I. God made 
us so. Neither of us has right to help defeat 
the other. Man — remember it — next time 
your blood runs hot and your pulses pound 
with evil: you may be tearing my house 
down about my head. 

But there is yet one other thing to say 
when a man falls. And, sad to tell, we do 
not usually say it. Usually we say that 
when a man falls he unmakes his whole life, 
neutralizes it, denies his own good. It is 
not so. God knows the case is bad enough, 
but not so bad as that. No man is wholly 
corrupt — not even Nero, or Benvenuto 
Cellini, or Judas. And whatever good Nero 
has done, or Judas, becomes the property 
of the world ; not even the doer of it can take 
it back. After Hugh Pentecost demitted 
the ministry and began his blasphemous 
career I heard it said that he had negatived 
all his earlier years. And when I heard I 
believed. Now I know better. A man 



134 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

cannot revoke the good he has done. He 
may offset it; he may do more harm than 
ever he did good, but he cannot take back 
any unselfishness he has practiced, any truth 
he has lived — any more than he can call 
back and cancel his spoken words, or nega- 
tive the experiences he has lived. I dare 
not say, even, that it were better if he had 
never been born. Jesus may say it: Jesus 
did say it, as concerning men who cause 
others to sin. I cannot say it. The books 
are not mine, but God's. And God has won- 
derful ways of using all sorts of agents in 
the establishment of his kingdom among 
men. 

A friend of mine recently visited the 
huge powder mill at Hopewell. And he 
tells a depressing story of the workmen. 
Such hard faces, such riotous lives, such daily 
violence and horror, he says he never beheld 
before. Thousands of men living and fight- 
ing like beasts of the jungle — and not the 
sweetening presence of a woman among 
them — it seems incredible that they should 
be fit for any kind of work. Yet, lawless 
and profligate as they are, they make good 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 135 

powder. Not all righteous criticism of their 
personal lives alters the fact that they are 
producing good powder, powder which, by 
the grace of God, shall help blast tyranny 
from its trenches and loosen the seats of the 
mighty. Would God that every man who 
lays a brick, or runs a train, or teaches a 
class, were a good man! To that we must 
come. But meantime let us be fair enough 
to recognize and accept good work, even when 
wrought by unhallowed and unclean hands. 
In the vast "mills of the gods" are all sorts 
of workmen — lewd and chaste, hard and 
tender, perverse and docile. And the God 
of all uses all of them, paying them wages, 
giving credit for every stroke of toil. In 
ways beyond their ken and ours, he gathers 
into the furtherance of that "purpose" which 
"through the ages runs," all their skill and 
pains. My God is big enough to do that. 
If yours isn't, how big is he? 

O, but the man who drove hard — we have 
almost lost sight of him. God used Jehu. 
Up to now, and perhaps for ages to come, 
God has use for men who drive hard. See 
Attila, the Hun, sweeping down across the 



136 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

lovely fields of Italy, driving hard. Neither 
pity nor reverence knew he. He was indeed 
a scourge. But was it accident or splendid 
insight that nicknamed him the "Scourge of 
God"? He was that. Who doubts to-day 
that God used him to help rouse Italy from 
hopeless sleep ? And here is the modern war 
lord — called by some a second Attila — plow- 
ing a continent with the terrible wheels of 
his chariot, sowing the furrows with blood 
and tears, "driving furiously." I do not pre- 
tend to foresee the issue. Not mine to 
apportion the blame. This alone I am sure 
of : that when the smoke of conflict lifts, and 
the last cripple has limped home, we shall 
find that God used the war lord — perhaps 
by tearing him from his throne — to make 
earth a juster, fairer place for men to dwell. 
Unitarians are fond of reminding us that 
we cannot measure their influence by the size 
of their denomination, as recorded in the 
religious census. They say that the leaven 
of their doctrine of God has worked in the 
mass of evangelic Christianity, and that we 
think more worthily of our Maker as result 
of their hard driving. Why not ? God uses 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 137 

apparent enemies, as well as manifest 
friends, to help him build his church. They 
drove furiously, did the leaders of Unitarian- 
ism. They rode down our feelings and our 
precious orthodoxies. But God, their Father 
and ours, was still on his throne, and I doubt 
not he used Channing and Theodore Parker, 
Emerson and Fuller, as he used Philistines 
and Syrians in training his children of old. 
The heretics of yesterday make more robust 
saints to-day. 

Even Robert G. Ingersoll, with all his 
truculence and iconoclasm — of course God 
used him. God had to use him, and such as 
he, or relinquish claim to be God of all the 
earth. Doubtless the lectures of Ingersoll 
made skeptics of some. I used to feel the 
heart of me grow hot against his reckless 
driving among the sanctities of our most holy 
faith. He was so ruthless and brutal. He 
drove hard. But God did not resign even 
when Ingersoll lampooned him. And if the 
famous unbeliever made skeptics of some, he 
made sturdier Christians of others. Driving 
us in upon the splendid certitudes of the soul, 
he unintentionally helped us to a firmer grip 



138 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

on God's hand. So, in all ages, is the rule 
of our God. He is not frightened at the 
false faces His children wear. With beauti- 
ful irony he makes even the wrath of man 
to praise him. And with a skill which only 
the future can reveal, he turns to the account 
of his Kingdom on earth, the furious driving 
of all earth's Jehus. 

But this is what you see on one side of the 
shield. On the other side are the havoc and 
the heartache which Jehu works. See his 
arrow seek Joram. "And Jehu drew a bow 
with his full strength, and smote Jehoram 
between his arms, and the arrow went out 
at his heart, and he sunk down in his chariot." 
With characteristic energy, Jehu drove hard. 
And the victim was his recreant king. But 
is it nothing that a man should die — even 
though he be a bad man? It hurts to die, 
even when one deserves it. Then, see Jehu 
looking up at Jezebel's window, and hear 
his terrible command: "Throw her down." 
And they obeyed, and her blood spattered 
his horses, and he spurned her with his foot. 
What a dreadful end to a cruel life! But 
Jezebel was a woman, and it is sweet to live. 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 139 

O, the pain which Jehu gives while he drives 
hard! 

Sitting in the quiet and security of the 
church, it is easy to philosophize over the 
blessings which will doubtless accrue to the 
world from this pitiless war. Thank God 
we can philosophize; otherwise we might go 
mad with pain. But who will give back to 
mothers their boys? And to sweethearts 
their lovers? And to children their 
"daddies"? Who will cancel out the un- 
recorded anguish of a thousand battlefields? 
Who will set flowing again, where God 
meant it to be, the torrents of blood? Ah, 
that is the price one part of the world pays 
for the furious driving of Jehu — that the 
rest of the world may be blessed. I am 
thinking of that just now. This rough driv- 
ing age of ours — of course God is in it — 
but O, the slain! To be able to buy better 
shoes at lower prices than our fathers paid, 
to ride in faster trains than our grandsires 
dreamed of, to lay distant lands under 
tribute to provide luxuries for our tables 
and comfort for our homes — think what 
these privileges cost in blood and privation 



140 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

for others. Think of the brothers who died 
stringing our electric wires, and the little 
sisters, wrecked in nerve, sitting at telephone 
switchboards while we save ourselves steps 
and time. This driving furious age, this age 
of efficiency raised to the n th power — guess 
what its speed means to the victims. 

And remember that Jehu himself is victim 
also, not under the chariot, but in it. The 
speed mania takes something from the soul 
of the driver, makes him callous and selfish. 
I wish there were time to ask how much the 
speed of the world has cost you, measured in 
terms of the soul. It takes time to be a 
friend, and to have one. It takes time to 
love music and books. It takes time to be 
holy. And Jehu seldom has "time." He 
must drive on — and on — and on — and al- 
ways on. And to what? What shall it 
profit him if he win his race against time 
and competitors, and see always, in dreams, 
the faces of those he has crushed in his haste, 
and find himself out of a job when the driv- 
ing is done? "What shall it profit a man, 
if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his 
own soul?" 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 141 

We must leave Jehu. But not until we 
notice one thing more. Success in driving 
failed to make him a good man. The record 
says that "Jehu took no heed to walk in the 
law of the Lord . . . for he departed not 
from the sins of Jeroboam, which made 
Israel to sin." He was a great driver, but 
when you have said that you have said all. 
His hands were clever, his body was stalwart, 
but his soul was sick. And the final reckon- 
ing is always in terms of soul. 



X 

THE MAN WHO GOT WHAT HE 
GAVE 

If you were asked to name the greatest 
discovery of ancient or modern times, what 
would you say ? Gravitation, or gunpowder, 
or electricity, or the circulation of the blood, 
or the germ theory of disease, or what? 
Somebody recently conducted an interesting 
questionnaire on the subject. But the list 
of answers did not even hint at the discovery 
I am about to name. The greatest discovery 
of the ages is the discovery that "every story 
has two sides." I wish we knew the dis- 
coverer's name, as we do that of Newton and 
Davy, Jenner and Pasteur. He is deserv- 
ing of a taller monument than any of the 
others. Even though his discovery is not 
yet in general use, his anonymous fame 
ought to be secure. 

Guess how different the world's history 
would be if men and women had remembered 
that "every story has two sides." There 

142 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 143 

would have been no Inquisition, no War 
of the Roses in England, no Civil Agony in 
our own republic, no Philippine dilemma. 
Nay, we should have been spared the most 
excuseless military convulsion of the ages. 
Merely the frankness to admit that every 
story has two sides, and that we ought to 
hear both before making up our minds and 
launching our projectiles — what a transfor- 
mation this would work in our own streets 
and homes! Most of the powder of scorn 
is burned wastefully. Most of the broken 
friendships might have been saved. Most 
of the domestic altars would have been left 
inviolate. But, instead, we so fill our ears 
with the side we are telling or hearing that 
it rarely seems to occur to us that the other 
side of the story may be just as plausible, 
just as credible as ours. Some day, before 
the kingdom of heaven comes on earth — 
before it can be made to come — we shall 
eagerly admit that every story has two sides, 
and hear them both. 

I mention the matter now for the sake of 
Haman — the man who got what he gave. 
And I mention it because one side of his 



144 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

story is all the Bible gives. He has always 
been ranked with the damned. I never heard 
anybody say a good word for him. Yet I 
am sure there were good words to be said. 
God never made a man or woman who lacked 
redeeming traits. Nero had them, and the 
terrible Borgias, and Iago, and Shylock. So 
must Haman. And I cannot help wishing 
that we had his biography as penned by his 
most ardent friend. I should like to com- 
pare one with the other — the record of his 
apologist and the Bible narrative: just as 
we do with contrasting editorials on Presi- 
dent Wilson. Nay, I should like to find the 
greatest common divisor of both equations. 
In plain justice, then, to Haman, let me 
attempt to do that. And we shall find that 
both records agree upon this — the romance 
of his rise. He began small, as did John 
Wanamaker and Abraham Lincoln, Charles 
Lamb and Oliver Cromwell. He was not 
even native to the air of the court which 
honored him. From the ranks of a con- 
quered tribe he climbed to a place just under 
the throne. He is an illustration of that 
romantic element which forever forbids us 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 145 

to assign to men fixed grades. And I do 
not believe that even he could explain the 
romance of his rise. Now and again an 
enterprising editor persuades some famous 
man to share with the rest of mankind the 
secret of his power. Perhaps it is McClure 
himself, taking his magazine readers into his 
confidence. We read the story, every word, 
and understand the English — and end by 
knowing little more than at the beginning. 
You might as well hand a lexicon to a baby. 
Not the rising at a certain hour, not the divi- 
sion of one's time, not the amount of exercise 
or study, nor the abstention from tobacco — 
this is not really the secret. The solemn fact 
is that the secret of personal success is as 
untransferable as personality. 

Hear Brutus' sneer by the body of his 
erstwhile friend: 

"Upon what meat hath this our Caesar fed, 
That he hath grown so great?" 

Deeper than the sneer is Brutus's wish that 
he knew the kind of meat which nourishes a 
career like Caesar's. Nor could Csesar tell, 
if the telling would save his life. Did you 



146 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

ever hear one housewife telling another how 
to make a certain kind of cake? Merely a 
matter of so much sugar and flour, so much 
butter and eggs plus a pinch of that and this. 
And will observance of the rule guarantee 
the result? 'Tis the "knack," they say. It 
is not in the formula, nor in the ingredients. 
For, some old colored "mammy" can do what 
her highly cultivated mistress never under- 
stands in the kitchen. 

Here is a famous canvas, say a Rembrandt 
or a Corot. What makes it? I defy you to 
learn from the critics. As hopefully scrape 
all the pigment from a canvas and, holding 
the desecrated elements in your vandal hand, 
say to the world, "This constitutes a paint- 
ing." But it doesn't, as the most convinced 
Philistine knows. Dips of chrome yellow 
and dashes of carmine, with what more, 
yield no sunrise like Turner's, no faces like 
Rubens's, apart from the master's hand. Nor 
can the artist tell. He does not know. It 
is the romance of God's gift to him. Or 
here is a surgeon with a record of marvelous 
cures. Of course he will hold clinics. He 
will show the profession just how he does 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 147 

the work. He will explain every step of the 
process. But how many of his auditors are 
likely to be able to do the same thing after- 
ward? You cannot tell people great secrets 
like that. He would need to give them his 
hand, and even then they would blunder 
with it, apart from his eye and his judg- 
ment. His skill is his personal romance. 

Or here is an evangelist, a specialist in 
winning men to Jesus Christ. When he 
talks, the thing he talks about seems the 
simplest as well as the most beautiful thing 
in the world. Anybody can do it. Thank 
God that anybody really can. But never by 
imitating somebody else. One of my friends 
was so impressed with Billy Sunday that 
he left the regular ministry in order to de- 
vote himself to evangelistic campaigns after 
the Billy Sunday pattern. I think he knows 
better now. He certainly ought to. Billy 
Sunday cannot tell any other man how to 
do it. If I thought he could, I should be 
sure that "Billy" is an impostor. How and 
why God honors his strange, wild ministry, 
Billy knows as well as you do — no better. 
That is the romance. 



148 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

And so I come back to Hainan. Not a 
line is here concerning the steps by which 
he mounted to power. Yet we know just as 
much as we could know after being told. 
Call him a grafter or a sycophant or anj- 
hard name you will, and you have not gotten 
far with your explanation. The rise of a 
man is as mysterious as the upward pull of 
his toy balloon in a child's hand, or the move- 
ment of the cream in his glass. As well 
account for Grant by the inevitable cigar in 
his mouth, or Paderewski by the length of 
his hair. When God does a great thing for 
you, you will never be able to explain it. A 
fortune or a friend, a great love or the soul 
of a neighbor won to your Lord — you will 
never be able to say how you won it. God 
does not mean that you should. It is his 
secret and yours. Talk would cheapen it. 
Keep the doors closed and the curtains 
drawn, as the Hebrews did upon the ark 
of the covenant. 

This is the first item upon which Hainan's 
warmest admirer and his biblical critic would 
easily agree: the romance of his rise. And 
the second is this: his love of popularity. 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 149 

Some folks do not seem to care — though I 
never quite believe them when they say so — 
what other people think about them. As 
a matter of fact, we ought to care. Haman 
did — very much, too much, in a way. In 
particular, he enjoyed being bowed to. As 
he went in and out at the king's gate every- 
body bowed to him. And his soul grew warm 
with pride. If Mordecai had done what 
the others did, my story had had a different 
ending. But speaking of bows brings back 
a quaint custom of the Yale of my day. I 
do not know if the custom has gone with 
the old fence and many another tradition. 
But as the president walked down the broad 
center aisle of the chapel, after prayers, 
each weekday morning, the student body 
waited, facing the aisle. Thus as he passed 
we bowed, each pew as he passed, a very 
profound if somewhat perfunctory bow, 
bending our bodies at the waist. Viewed 
from the gallery, it made a most amusing 
spectacle. And I have often seen a smile 
on old Prexy's face. Yet everybody loves 
to be bowed to. We spend a fair portion of 
our strength acquiring positions which make 



150 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

it incumbent upon others to bow to us. And 
the sweetest reward is to watch them bend 
the knee. I have sometimes fancied that the 
Pope must grow very weary of kisses be- 
stowed upon the sacred toe. But most of us 
can stand a good deal of that sort of homage. 
We love to be bowed to. 

Quite recently Congress created the rank 
of admiral, and we Americans were called 
upon to rejoice. The papers said so, elo- 
quently. But why rejoice? Not because 
certain naval commanders, thus honored, 
became thereby better sea-dogs, not because 
our rating as a sea power was enhanced. 
Simply because, on occasions of state, in 
foreign countries, our naval officers could 
stand further up in the line. It had been 
so humiliating for them to walk behind men 
not really higher in authority than them- 
selves. And it was doubtless essential to a 
maintenance of the proper dignity of these 
United States that our own naval represen- 
tatives assert their full grade! Doubtless. 
But I am not a competent authority in such 
matters of finesse. I merely know how 
ardently we love the front ranks, and the 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 151 

proper obeisance of the crowd. We can 
understand Haman. 

By contrast I remind you of one of the 
stories they tell of Lincoln. It may be 
apocryphal, but it is good enough to be 
true. He was walking with a friend when 
a humble pedestrian appeared in the path 
ahead. Of course it was the other's place 
to turn out for the President. But as the 
other showed no disposition so to do, Mr. 
Lincoln quietly stepped aside and let the 
other pass. And when his friend asked why 
a President should do such an ignominious 
thing, Lincoln looked as innocent as a baby 
and replied, "Why, if I hadn't turned out 
of the way there might have been a col- 
lision." O, great souled man! No wonder 
they call you great. Not in regalia, nor in 
court etiquette, nor in hair-splitting diplo- 
macy, but great in sheer height of manhood, 
great in the girth of soul. When a man is as 
big as Lincoln was he does not need to be 
bowed to. He can afford to give way. 

For that is the genius of Christianity. 
Somebody says that the difference between 
ordinary socialism and true Christianity is 



152 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

this: "Socialism says, 'I am as good as you 
are.' Christianity says, 'You are as good 
as I am.' " Much of the world's bitterness 
is the result of our trying to prove that we 
are as good as our neighbor. How about 
trying the other way? You never find our 
Lord worrying about the deference due him. 
His disciples did the worrying. Stooping 
never seemed to shorten his stature. With- 
out conscious loss of dignity he could wash 
his friends' feet. He was so serenely sure 
of himself. 

Just here, I believe, was the root of 
Haman's rage against Mordecai. If Haman 
had been sure of himself, what need he care 
whether or not Mordecai bowed? Haman 
might even have gone so far as to be sorry 
for the other — as Jesus was for the men 
who crucified him. What matter, one bow 
more or less? But Mordecai's behavior was 
as salt in a wound. It reminded Haman 
of something he wanted to forget — how un- 
worthy and insincere he was. Haman was 
inflated and knew it, and Mordecai pricked 
him. Even Haman's best friend would have 
admitted that, I think. Mordecai's failure 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 153 

to bow told Haman how unworthy he was 
of the bows of the others. Hence his rage. 

At least it is so with us. Our sensitiveness 
is a symptom of our unsoundness. None are 
so quick to resent criticism as those to whom 
the criticism applies, none so keen to defend 
their dignity as those whose dignity needs 
most defense, none so fierce in their outcry 
against a slight or a snub as those who realize 
the hollowness of their own pretensions. A 
man whose fortune is invested in good real 
estate does not need to go white over the 
news of the stock-ticker. And a soul that 
stands four-square to the world can bear 
some pretty strong winds without feeling 
unsettled. To be called a thief does not 
hurt the honest man nearly so much as it 
hurts the thief. Jesus never seemed to feel 
called upon to defend himself. He held his 
shining way, as we, in proportion to our 
integrity, can afford to do. He did not even 
grow hot when people called him a "glutton 
and a wine-bibber." He knew. And the 
world knows to-day. 

But my story hastens. Once Haman got 
his attention fixed upon his poor, injured 



154 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

dignity, he could not enjoy anything. He 
woke in the morning thinking about it. He 
fell asleep thinking of it and dreamed hor- 
ribly of Mordecai. When his friends re- 
minded him of his many honors, Haman 
sourly admitted, "All this availeth me noth- 
ing so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting 
at the king's gate." You know how it usually 
is when a man has rheumatism. That is the 
all absorbing theme. All paths of conversa- 
tion lead to it. Let the talk fall upon the 
weather, and he remembers that his rheuma- 
tism is always worse in certain kinds of 
weather. Tell him that a neighbor is afflicted 
with boils or grippe, and he sees occasion 
to remind you how much more serious 
rheumatism is. Talk of golf, and he sadly 
remembers how he used to play before the 
rheumatism came. Spread him a banquet, 
and forsooth he cannot enjoy it, on account 
of his rheumatism. Talk of heaven, and the 
best thing he can say of it is that the inhabi- 
tants don't have rheumatism. 

So with Haman. So with us in our 
grouches and chagrins. Life swings in a 
pitifully small circle, and we always come 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 155 

back to the same point. Everything accen- 
tuates our hurt. It is like a sore thumb, 
always being struck. Isn't it pathetic how 
one moderate-sized injury to our feelings 
can fill the sky, blotting out the glow of 
sunrise and constellations ? A certain parri- 
cide said he could not bear to hear the birds 
sing: their twittering always seemed re- 
proaching him for the murder of his father. 
Poor little birds, they did not mean any 
such thing. The thing was in the wretched 
man's soul. But it is easier to kill the birds 
than the thing in the soul. So the plot 
thickened. Mordecai must die. Everything 
else seemed to help on the plan. The wife's 
counsel, an invitation to the queen's banquet, 
the king's strange question — everything re- 
lated itself to Mordecai and revenge. Even 
the gallows were built in advance — high 
enough so that the world could see how sorely 
Haman had been hurt. 

Just a moment while the scene shifts. 
Yes, there is a figure dangling from the 
gallows Haman built. But the figure is not 
that of the hateful Jew: it is Hainan's, "hoist 
by his own petard." He got what he gave. 



156 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

This is part of the solemnity of life. We 
are constantly swallowing the poison pre- 
pared for others. Suspicion, flung out into 
God's world, tumbles back upon our own 
heads. Jealousy spawns quickly, and its 
young attack our own vitals. You cannot 
sow distrust and not reap it, or unkindness 
and not gather, or pride and not fall. A 
wonderful world is this in which the voice 
which life gives us back is the echo of our 
own. 



XI 

THE MAN WHO DISLIKED THE 
PRESCRIPTION 

So eminent an authority as Whittier 
undertakes to name for us the saddest four 
words in language: 

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, 

The saddest are these, "It might have been." 

Pardon me if I suggest that the Quaker 
poet might have boiled his four words down 
to one. Such a process might not have 
suited his meter, but the result would have 
fitted the facts. And the single word which 
Whittier might have substituted for four is 
the tiny word "if." Sad little tear-stained 
monosyllable, spotted with blood, and burst- 
ing with bitter regrets. When his staff 
reminded him that an "if" was in the way, 
Napoleon replied that he would remove the 
"if." To take the "ifs" out of life would kill 
huge part of its pain. "If I had only 
known," moaned Carlyle at the graveside of 

157 



158 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

his patient Jane. "Lord," said Martha, "if 
thou hadst been here, my brother had not 
died." Or Edwin Booth, yearning for his 
dead Mary: "If Mary should come to me, 
I feel that my soul would no longer have 
doubts." O, the pitiful "ifs" which start 
us sweating in the night, and streak the 
heavens by day with fire! If, if, if! Live 
your life over and omit the "ifs" — perhaps 
you would ask no diviner privilege. You 
might have been rich, or honored, or useful, 
or good, or merely happy, if! 

But my talk to-night is not upon a tiny 
word of two letters. It concerns itself with 
a slightly longer word which divides with the 
former the heartaches and bitterness of men. 
"But" is its name. If I were called upon to 
designate the saddest two words of tongue 
or pen, I think I should select these: "if" 
and "but." And I am not sure that the 
second pales greatly by comparison with the 
first. Take out the "ifs" and the "buts," 
and ours would be a very different world. 
Few of us would want to leave it for heaven. 
"But" — O sinister, dwarfing, hateful word: 
let me build my story around it. 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 159 

"Naaman . . . was a great man . . . ; he 
also was a mighty man in valor, but/' You 
know something dismal is coming before I 
complete the sentence. That is precisely the 
way we damn men and things. We start 
with a compliment and we end with a curse. 
We tell how good our neighbor is, "but" 
We have no doubts about the security of a 
certain bank, "but" We were in a fair way 
to enjoy ourselves, "but! 3 How familiar it 
sounds ! And the word has noble uses, also. 
Many a dark sky has been cleared, many a 
bruised reputation saved by a timely and 
cheering use of the small adversative. I 
am thinking just now, however, of its sinister 
service — how it pulls down and tramples. 
"Naaman was a great man with his master, 
and honorable, . . . and a mighty man in 
valor, but" Now, mind what this particular 
complaint was. Had it not been leprosy, it 
might have been lameness, or jealousy, or 
unrequited love, or unbelief, or anything else 
you can think of. The tragedy is that we 
cannot complete the sentence without stab- 
bing it near the heart. 

Lord Byron had a wonderful gift, but he 



160 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

had also a club foot. John Wesley might 
have been happy as well as great in service, 
but he married the wrong woman. George 
Eliot had left a fairer fame but for Colonel 
Lewes. William of Orange wrote his name 
big in history, but he stained it by his un- 
chaste life. England cannot forget her 
Nelson, but she wishes he had been as clean 
as he was brave. Luther did a work of 
incalculable value, but his temper went 
partly untamed. Paul had honors enough 
from God to crowd his soul, but there was 
also the thorn, and the memory of Stephen's 
murder. Jesus came from God and went 
to God, but he came by the way of a manger, 
and went by the way of the cross. Always 
the grim adversative — "but" "but" "but." 
And nowise different with us. No oint- 
ment without the intruding fly. No sky 
lacking fleck or threat of cloud. No heart 
without its personal burden. I do not pause 
to ask how it came to be so. I content my- 
self with observing that so it is — and that if 
we could read men as God does we should 
find no exceptions. Sometimes I find myself 
searching the eyes of people. I am trying 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 161 

to read their hearts. No, I am not curious. 
Their secrets are their own. I am merely 
wondering what loads they are carrying 
alone, and far from sight. Into our home 
there used to come a rare soul. He was 
sunshine and smiles and strength. He al- 
ways left a blessing about the premises. He 
seemed an exception to the rule we are 
thinking of. Then the bitter truth came 
out. All the smiling years he had been 
hiding a father's shame for a dissolute son. 
And as I remember the honors and affection 
life piled upon that father I wonder how 
big they all bulked when he thought of his 
boy. 

In one of the saddest letters ever penned, 
David Gray, the young English poet, cries 
across the Channel to his father, "Father, I 
have come through things that would make 
your heart break if you could know, things 
I shall never tell except to God." The poor 
home-sick lad longed to come home to die, 
in his own little room, as he said. And would 
he tell his father as well as God? O, the 
pathetic haste with which we shut the closet 
where the skeleton is when company comes! 



162 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

O, the pitiful deceits we practice upon the 
world. Enough that God knows! "Be 
pitiful," wrote Ian Maclaren, in an album, 
upon the occasion of his last visit to America : 
"you do not know what the other man is 
bearing." 

Ah, Naaman, we are brothers of thine. 
We have not leprosy, but we have something 
to dim the blue of our sky, and poison the 
wells of our joy. We have money enough, 
and friends, and good health, but. Always 
the grim little adversative ! 

But, God be thanked, that is not the whole 
of the story, either for Naaman or for us. 
Else I ought to be ashamed to bring it here. 
This is the house of hope. And, as Naaman 
found, even leprosy is not incurable. There 
are plenty of people already registered as 
stand-patters with misery. Out on a poultry 
farm, known to some of you, they showed 
me an inveterate "setting hen." "Setting" 
is her specialty. She always wants to "set." 
Spring, summer, wet or dry — any time is a 
good time for hatching. And any sort of 
egg — duck egg, unfertilized egg, addled egg 
— is entitled to be sat on for the full term, 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 163 

and something to spare. Wise-eyed, sad, 
persistent, protesting, half nourished be- 
cause she cannot find time to eat, she re- 
minds me of some people I have met; not 
all belonging to her own sex. You can 
scarcely drive them off the nests in which 
their afflictions lie. Beat them up with a 
broom handle, and back they come, gasping 
and ruffled, as if their precious eggs might 
have grown cold during their absence. 

Let me lift a protesting voice. There are 
burdens that do not need to be borne — any 
longer. There are sorrows whose death is 
long overdue. There are sores that would 
heal if we gave them a chance. At least it 
is fair neither to God nor ourselves to spend 
any time brooding. The very best one can 
hope to hatch from an old grief is a new 
heartache. Maybe Naaman will catch some- 
thing else as soon as he gets rid of his leprosy. 
Maybe the fire will prove hotter than the 
frying pan. But no child of the Eternal is 
justified in frying in the fat of his sorrow 
when there is any honorable way out. Take 
a chance on the fire, once and again. "Go 
bury thy sorrow," even though some new 



164 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

trial springs from its grave. "Hope in God, 
. . . who is the health of my countenance, 
and my God." 

Look at Naaman again. Just when that 
intrepid warrior's day seemed darkest, and 
life not worth while, God was preparing to 
take the hateful "but" away. Would you 
believe it, God is always doing that sort of 
beautiful thing? He hates to see his chil- 
dren go sad and sore, worse than you hate 
to see street urchins go barefoot in winter. 
Doctors admit that perhaps ninety per cent 
of sick folks would get well anyhow if all 
practitioners were banished. But that is be- 
cause God, who was in the healing business 
before the first medical school was opened, 
is always "on the job." And he knows how 
to do a greater thing with a broken heart 
than with a broken arm. 

So the hint came to Naaman, the leper. 
At first it was merely a hint. And if Naaman 
had been as obtuse as we usually are when 
God is giving us hints, Naaman would have 
missed his cure. Suppose you were sick, 
and the waitress told your wife that she knew 
a doctor who could cure you, and your wife 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 165 

ventured to tell you. Well, to quote Scrip- 
ture, likely there would have been "silence in 
heaven for about one hour," if there had 
been nothing worse. The impertinence, the 
presumption, the effrontery — till you wear- 
ied trying to find adjectives to express your 
disgust ! As if you needed to be advised by 
an underling where to look for a cure! 
Precisely that happened in Naaman's house- 
hold. His wife had a captive serving maid, 
whose heart cried back home, and who had 
seen the telltale spot on the master's face, 
and remembered Elisha's name. And she 
had the hardihood to tell her mistress that 
the man of the house might get well if he 
had the right doctor. And the mistress of 
the house was just credulous enough to give 
the matter second thought and tell her hus- 
band. And Naaman was so discouraged 
that he was willing to try anything or any- 
body for the sake of being rid of his plague. 
Whereas we? Well, I greatly dislike to 
admit how stupid we are when God tries to 
give us hints. We need to be knocked over 
and beaten up before it seems to occur to us 
that God is trying to show us the way home. 



166 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

Any sort of a clue is good enough for the 
man who has lost his way in the woods. The 
difference in the bark on the north side of 
trees, the track of a foot in the brush, the 
furtive gleam of a light in the distance — 
any clue is worth following, for the lost 
traveler. Any kind of hint suffices to chal- 
lenge the interest of an alert mechanic or 
inventor. A bit of steel, accidentally split in 
the hand of Joseph Gillott while working at 
his trade, gave the world its steel pen. Sight 
of the wasted drop of solder in the old- 
fashioned tin can factory set a workman 
thinking, and issued in a device which saves 
thousands of dollars in every such plant. 
An unintended scratch on glass suggested 
etching and its beautiful uses. Indeed, it 
may be said that many of the most important 
inventions in common use represent the par- 
tial "harvest of a quiet eye." Any hopeful 
lead sets the chemist wide awake. Who shall 
estimate the patience of that quest which 
ended with the identification of the typhoid 
germ, or the bacillus of diphtheria? A thou- 
sand failures, and a thousand and one at- 
tempts. As Napoleon said after his disas- 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 167 

trous defeat at Marengo, "The battle is lost, 
but there is yet time to win another." You 
cannot defeat that spirit, whether on a battle- 
field or in a laboratory. And, some day, fol- 
lowing the lead of the gentlest chemical or 
microscopical hint, somebody will trail to its 
lair the foul secret of cancer. 

Yes, hints are enough except for our 
stupid hearts. Somebody tells of a village 
booby who was constantly getting in the 
way. One day he wandered into a village 
store and, after teetering around for a time, 
was thrust out upon the sidewalk. Nothing 
daunted, he soon reappeared at the counter, 
and was again ejected, this time still more 
roughly. But he had the persistence of blind 
souls, and a third time he entered the store. 
For this latest offense he was fairly flung in 
a heap near the curb. Then the light broke. 
For, as he gathered himself together, rue- 
fully flecking the dust from his clothing, 
he said with somewhat belated conviction: 
"I've kinder got it into my head they don't 
want me in there." 

O, the hard falls we should save ourselves, 
and the heart aches we should escape, if we 



168 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

were quicker to take God's hints! I believe 
the human spirit is immeasurably more sensi- 
tive than any barometer. It registers the 
approach of a thousand storms. It hints 
where the sunshine is. It is constantly 
bringing us signals of danger or prophecies 
of spring skies. And you may depend upon 
it more confidently than upon the readings 
of the most delicate barometer ever built. 
Do you recall the bitter wonder of Jeremiah 
over his countrymen's obtuseness? — "The 
stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed 
times . . . and the swallow observeth the 
time of their coming; but my people know 
not the judgment of the Lord." 

But we have not yet noticed the most 
familiar part of the story. Naaman came 
near to missing his cure. Taking the hint of 
the small messenger in his home, he did not 
enjoy what he found. Like most of us, he 
loved the theatrical, the spectacular, the 
august. If he was going to be healed of 
his leprosy, he insisted upon being healed in 
dramatic fashion. He expected Elisha to 
pose, and to recite his divine credentials, and 
to make mysterious motions. As he con- 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 169 

fessed afterward: "Behold, I thought, he 
will surely come out to me, and stand, and 
call on the name of the Lord his God, and 
strike his hand over the place, and recover 
the leper." That is what he was expecting. 
And when, instead of meeting that feverish 
expectation, Elisha sent a messenger telling 
Naaman to dip himself seven times in a 
modest river, Naaman did just what we 
probably should have done. "He turned 
and went away in a rage." Were there not 
in his own country rivers big enough to 
swallow the muddy Jordan, and still not 
overflow their banks? Poor, unreasonable 
Naaman! But for the simple good sense of 
his servants he had missed his great chance 
with God. 

How hotly we protest against God's un- 
ostentatious ways. Most of his healings are 
as simple as sunlight and smiles — and we 
wish they were different. I recall a woman 
who consulted an oculist. She was sure she 
needed glasses. She had her mind quite 
made up to them. And I think she would 
have been best pleased at a prescription for 
the most expensive lenses. But the physician 



170 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

quietly said: "Madam, you do not need 
glasses. All you need is to rest your eyes 
occasionally. Lift them from your book or 
needle to the trees or the hills." Most of us 
would resent such a simple prescription. The 
idea of paying money for that sort of advice ! 
But that is a fair sample of the healing 
ways of the Father. Here is a broken heart. 
As one reminded me : "Remember that there 
is always in the congregation somebody with 
a broken heart." There are such here. And 
if I should suggest that God's best way to 
heal a broken heart is by plenty of work 
and outgoes of kindness, would you relish 
the prescription? Some of you would rather 
pay for a surgical operation, or make a pil- 
grimage to Mecca. I read with interest some 
weeks ago how George Inness tried "to 
break into the church." He was looking for 
a man's job. And he said that no preacher 
could suggest one. Shall I dare intimate 
that he was quite half to blame ? He wanted 
a dramatic task — something unusual and 
startling. And he might have found, any 
day, at his elbow in the office, or on the 
street, precisely the sort of task by the doing 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 171 

of which Jesus expects his kingdom to come. 
No need to hunt for work so long as there is 
among your employees or fellows or children 
one who does not know your Lord. 

So with the healing of the soul itself. Billy 
Sunday comes to town. And what more can 
Billy Sunday do than to show men and 
women the old simple door to the Father's 
house? He will call them to "hit the trail." 
He invites them to come forward and take 
his hand. He sees that their names are 
taken. But when all the externals, of trom- 
bone and chorus and enthusiasm, are taken 
away, the residue is the simple, sweet pre- 
scription against which so many protest be- 
cause it is simple. To the first disciples 
and to the latest, Jesus says the same thing: 
"Follow me." That is the whole command. 
But all light and love and heaven are in 
obedience to that simple, inclusive word. 

Naaman recovered his senses before his 
opportunity had passed. He was willing, 
for once, to try the simple way. "Then 
went he down, and dipped himself seven 
times in Jordan, . . . and his flesh came 
again like unto the flesh of a little child." 



XII 
THE MAN WHO GOT HIS PRICE 

Every painted likeness must be viewed 
from its proper angle. It will not suffice 
that we "look" at a canvas, however absorb- 
ingly. Most of us are easy victims of an 
ancient fallacy — that seeing involves merely 
the use of our eyes. And, for that matter, 
we need never hope to see all that the artist 
sees. But there is always a vantage point 
from which we may most intelligently study 
a canvas. I learned this lesson afresh in a 
studio recently. I was admiring the artist's 
skill. I might have insisted that I was using 
my eyes, both of them. But the artist called, 
"Here — you must stand here!" 

So I feel with respect to our study of 
Judas, the man who got his price. No par- 
ticular credit to ourselves, or to him, that 
his features are familiar to all of us. Indeed, 
they are painfully familiar. His portrait 
hangs in an uncomfortably conspicuous 

172 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 173 

place, rivaling Peter's and John's. Some- 
times it seems that we cannot get out of 
range of it. We shudder, and yet look 
again, as at an evil eye, or at some poor, 
mangled body in the street. O, Judas, it 
would be hell enough merely to know what 
the world thinks of you. But even the like- 
ness of the betrayer deserves to be viewed 
from the proper angle. And I believe we 
find that angle here. "He cast down the 
pieces of silver in the temple, and . . . went 
and hanged himself." That is not simply 
the closing page of the tragedy: it throws 
its uncanny light upon the whole story lead- 
ing thereto. Knowing what Judas did after 
the poison of treason began to work upon 
his Master, we know a great deal that we 
must otherwise have missed knowing about 
him. Did you ever study his portrait from 
the site of his gallows? I do not ask you to 
forgive him — though I am sure his Master 
did. All I ask is that you look at him from 
the angle of his terrible self-vengeance. 

And the first thing to see is altogether 
obvious — so obvious that you can see it from 
any angle. He was a full member of the 



174 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

twelve. For the greater part of three years 
he went in and out with Peter and Thomas 
and John — and without hint of disparage- 
ment. Remember that the Gospels were 
written after the tragedy; and that the 
evangelists would have been more than 
human if they had not tried to trace the 
trail of the serpent down the entire path of 
Judas's discipleship. I wonder if such a 
method is ever fair? To seize upon a 
brother's evil deed and use it as a sponge 
to wipe out the record of his good ! Benedict 
Arnold was not always a traitor: he was a 
loyal soldier for many years. Abelard is 
entitled to be remembered for many acts 
besides the havoc he wrought in his own 
soul when his path crossed Eloise's. It is 
said that the monster of cruelty, Caligula, 
was a mild-mannered, well-disposed boy. 
You couldn't deny Peter's skill as a fisher- 
man, or the lovableness of his nature, even 
to account for his cowardice. And so I 
believe that the full story of Judas's life 
would furnish many a beautiful lesson. I 
wish we had his portrait painted by Jesus 
Christ. 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 175 

"Papa tells God all the naughty things I 
do," complained a youngster, "but he never 
says a word about the times I try to be good." 
What prompt confessors of other people's 
faults are we ! — so keen to detect a neighbor's 
departure from the perpendicular in conduct, 
so ruinously alive to another's mistake. I 
wonder if the psalmist was thinking of the 
contrast when he cried into the face of God : 
"If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquity, who 
shall stand?" Sometimes God could afford 
to forget: we are so certain to remember. 
Have you read the poetized story of Rizpah 
— Rizpah watching the bodies of her dead 
boys, beating off with her naked hands the 
hovering vultures? She would have done 
even more for their good names. Try to 
lisp some evil against them, if you dare. 
She would tear you to shreds. And did you 
ever fight like that for the good name of 
people, driving off the unclean birds of 
scandal? Or have you played vulture? 

In so far as the familiar cynicism of Mark 
Antony is true at all, 

The evil that men do lives after them, 
The good is oft interred with their bones, 



176 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

it is because we play the part of grave- 
diggers. God did not so intend. He gave 
to goodness an immortality he bestows not 
upon evil. In the long record of the mil- 
lenniums even "the memory of the wicked 
shall rot." But meantime we are so careful 
to keep it alive. Poor Judas! Nobody 
really knows how he looked. We have none 
but portraits done by artists who learned to 
despise him. I am sure that Jesus who dis- 
missed him to his appointment so gently, on 
the night of the betrayal, would have found 
somewhat kind to say. 

I remember a girl who had been piteously 
marked from birth. You could scarcely keep 
your eyes from her face, it was so disfigured. 
Often I wondered how she could smile at 
all. She must have known : God forgive the 
mirrors the pain they cause. But one day 
her mother said to me, "Did you notice how 
beautiful one side of Hattie's face is?" No, 
I had not noticed. I was obsessed with the 
birthmark. It had never occurred to me 
that I ought to look for beauty in such a 
face. Yet the beauty was there. And from 
that day to this, with that mother's pleading 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 177 

admonition in my ears, I have failed not to 
look for the few beautiful inches in the 
woman's face. But I had to be jolted out 
of our usual way. Usually a good-sized wart 
or wen suffices to distract attention from an 
otherwise lovely face. God is so different. 
As the record says : "His eye beholdeth every 
perfect thing." That is the kind he stresses. 
He would rather behold the beauty than the 
blemish. And he lives to help us discover 
our own good. 

But the case for Judas does not rest en- 
tirely upon surmise. He was treasurer for 
the twelve. As John says, with a sneer, 
Judas "had the bag." I wish John had 
omitted the sneer, for there is no intimation 
that Judas fell below the standard of careful 
banker. There are born financiers, people 
who love to handle money as the artist loves 
his brush, and the musician his instrument. 
And you can trust them, not with your good 
name perhaps, or your wife, but with your 
money. They are as safe as the Bank of 
England. I assume that Judas was that 
sort of man. He gravitated into the office 
of treasurer as naturally as water runs down 



178 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

hill. He held it until the dreadful night of 
the betrayal, for even John admits that when 
Judas left the table that blackest night they 
supposed he had gone out to purchase sup- 
plies, or to distribute money among the poor. 
Yes, Judas was treasurer, and a good one 
too — better than Peter would have been. I 
do not think that his comrades would ever 
have dreamed of electing Peter to the posi- 
tion. In an impetuous moment Peter might 
have emptied the bag upon some outcast, or 
to provide a banquet for his Lord. Fancy, 
too, what might have happened to the 
treasury while Peter was making his various 
excursions upon the water. No, not Peter. 
Judas was the man. 

I wonder if the tragedy began there. It 
is so hard for people with different gifts to 
understand each other. One day my atten- 
tion was called to a mixed brood down by the 
pond — chickens and ducks, recently hatched 
in the same nest by an unsuspecting mother. 
Up to that moment they had been good 
friends. Differences in shape of feet and in 
gait had been accepted. They had eaten 
from the same pan, and nestled under the 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 179 

same warm feathers. But at the margin of 
the pond they separated — like Baptists and 
Methodists — and life was different after- 
ward. Neither section of the brood could 
understand the other. That which each 
could do best, neither wished the other to 
do. Henceforward they traveled in separate 
companies. 

They were almost human in behavior. 
Many of the most racking bitternesses of 
life spring from the utter inability of sincere 
people to understand people equally sincere. 
Often we can get on with frank sinners more 
comfortably than with saints who worship 
after a different fashion. The kind of hymns 
we enjoy is doubtless the only kind to sing. 
The phrases in which we pour out our 
souls are the pregnant phrases from which 
all soul-cries must be born. The path we 
tread is the only one that leads surely to 
the Gate. 

Judas the practical. You may be sure 
he was that, whether or not he had ever been 
elected treasurer. Judas never could under- 
stand the high flights of the soul. He was 
deadly afraid of extravagance. Remember 



180 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

his outcry against Mary's passionate gift. 
The idea of wasting so much money in 
spikenard, even upon the dear feet of his 
Lord! Judas almost choked: "Why was not 
this ointment sold for three hundred pence 
and given to the poor?" Poor Judas, he put 
a price upon the priceless. But I have never 
quite forgiven John for his cruel comment. 
If he made it, at the time, to Judas, I can 
see the iron cut into Judas's soul. For, here 
is what John says concerning Judas's pur- 
blind speech: "This he said, not that he cared 
for the poor, but because he was a thief, 
and had the bag." Ah, John, you have no 
right to say that ! I do not think you would 
ever have been moved to say it but for the 
later conduct of Judas. It is a dreadful 
thing to smudge a man's soul with the black 
of some subsequent act. 

Boys flying kites haul in those white-winged birds : 
You can't do that when you are flying words. 
The ugly word, unspoken, falls back dead, 
But God himself can't kill it when 'tis said. 

Personally I do not so believe. I believe 
that Judas felt as we sometimes do when we 
see vast sums of money spent upon cathe- 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 181 

drals and monuments and mortuary flowers. 
As I have watched great mounds of costliest 
blooms piled up in cemetery plots, to be 
blackened by frost over night, and never to 
sweeten with one beautiful breath the sleep 
of the sleeper beneath, I have said in my 
heart a thing similar to Judas's criticism of 
Mary's spikenard: "Why were not these 
glorious blossoms left in the greenhouses and 
their price spent in shoes and bread?" But 
who am I to interfere with the great out- 
bursts of the heart ? The world is big enough 
to hold both kinds — God needs both kinds — 
John the dreamer and Judas the practical. 
Of the most remarkable orator who ever 
stood in a Baltimore pulpit it used to be said 
that he was fortunate to find ten cents in 
his pocket at any time. His salary was spent 
before it became due, or was given away to 
the first claimant for aid. And I suppose 
you would have clipped his glorious wings 
if you had been able to teach him economy. 
Soaring into the heavens, and with pocket 
presumably empty! But that is not the 
worst of it — that his pocket lacked a con- 
venient dime: the worst is that some people 



182 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

alleged his impecuniosity against his preach- 
ing. And possibly he pitted his preaching 
against their prudence. And so you have it 
again — hare and tortoise disputing relative 
values. When, I wonder, shall we grow big 
enough to admit that God needs a variety of 
children, and loves them all, and has work 
for all? 

But Judas the practical becomes Judas 
the disappointed — and God only knows the 
hideous shapes that break out of the soul's 
defeats. Looking at Judas, looking pitifully 
from his gallows-side, I am sure that Judas 
was doomed to disappointment. There are 
people so practical that they need to see 
everything set down in plain figures. Read- 
ing the internal revenue statistics concern- 
ing the consumption of liquor in the United 
States, they feel convinced that statutory 
prohibition is a failure. Taking cue from 
the war, they argue the collapse of Chris- 
tianity. When Billy Sunday closes a par- 
ticular campaign they will estimate, in terms 
of church membership, the net results of his 
stay. No hint of the dreams that have 
broken into sordid lives, no glimpse of the 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 183 

remade vows and rebuilt domestic altars, 
no reckoning of the inward, tmadvertised 
spiritual triumphs — only dry-as-dust figures ! 
They are Missourians clamoring to be 
"shown," and they will be "shown" in one 
fashion only. 

I think of Judas as that sort of man. 
And, being that sort of man, he was certain 
to be disappointed in Jesus. Judas wanted 
to see things happen. He was strong on 
"efficiency." He liked to see the dust fly. 
Vacuum-cleaner methods never would have 
appealed to him. He wanted the Kingdom 
to come with a rush. I am sure that he 
enjoyed the way Jesus drove the traders 
from the temple. That was Judas's concep- 
tion of progress. But the quiet building of 
hope in a human soul, the forgiving of a 
preposterous Peter, and the negation of all 
advertising methods, made Judas writhe. 

The most interesting defense of Judas I 
have ever seen is by a lawyer who, later, took 
Judas's terrible leap in the dark. He says 
that Judas was the most daring believer of 
the twelve. Judas had so much faith that 
he was willing to put his Master to the test. 



184 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

All the work needed was a supreme issue. 
Let him put Jesus into a position where 
Jesus must assert his power, and the results 
would be quick and dramatic. Hence, when 
Judas covenanted with the priests he was 
really celebrating his own surpassing, if raw, 
faith. 

But the thirty pieces of silver — have I 
forgotten them? No, I have not forgotten 
them. I see them in the hand of Judas, 
clinking drearily. I see him count them 
over one by one — with a strange light in 
his face ! ( Was it greed or hope or dismay ? ) 
And then I see them again on the floor of 
the temple where Judas flung them in hope- 
less agony. One, two, three — no, the sum is 
not great enough to explain the tragedy in 
the usual terms. If Judas had been money- 
mad he might have had three hundred or 
three thousand instead of thirty pieces. 
Some one suggests that they were intended 
to bind the bargain, merely, while Judas 
gave his Lord a chance to vindicate himself. 
We do not know. The secret was buried at 
the foot of Judas's gallows. Something 
evidently went wrong with the plan, or there 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 185 

would have been no gallows victim. I do 
not know just how far Judas meant to go 
when he covenanted with the priests. Judas 
himself never knew how far he had gone. 
He plunged out into the dark before the 
worst happened to his Lord. Something 
went wrong, I say. But whatever Judas 
intended, there is no doubt as to what he 
achieved. 

Motive is much, but motive is not all. 
The nurse who gave her patient the wrong 
medicine had a good motive, but the patient's 
life paid forfeit. A friend of mine who shot 
his own son while hunting was clean hearted, 
but he had killed his boy. John Wilkes 
Booth thought he was doing right when he 
crept into the box behind Lincoln and let 
go that fateful bullet, but the bullet did the 
work. We cannot hope to be saved for our 
motives. Even God must deal also with 
results. When Judas saw what he had done 
he could find no retribution dreadful enough 
to express his shame. Whatever his sin, he 
had conscience left. "And he cast down the 
pieces of silver in the temple, and . . . 
hanged himself." 



186 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

For betraying his Lord. That is how he 
described his act. "I have betrayed the inno- 
cent blood." To do that is easier than we 
usually admit. There are so many fashions 
of betraying Christ. We may be guilty of 
it while we are telling the world how much 
we adore him. Lately there have been some 
interesting discussions as to the right of a 
belligerent vessel to hoist an enemy-coun- 
try's flag. I leave the question to the proper 
authorities for settlement. But to raise the 
flag of Jesus Christ over any craft not en- 
gaged in his business is betrayal. To commit 
him to hasty campaigns is betrayal of him as 
truly as disloyalty or secret treason. To 
make any sort of terms, however disin- 
genuous, with his foes is betrayal of him. 
To hear him defamed and not to shout for 
him, to play fast and loose with his require- 
ments, to give him our lips instead of our 
lives, is betrayal. That piteous gallows with 
its broken form — what a warning it speaks! 
O, the tragedy of learning too late what we 
might have known before! 



XIII 

THE MAN WHO STARTED 
WRONG 

Among the curious souvenirs of the 
Orient brought me as a boy by a traveler 
was one which interested me strangely. It 
was an ancient tear-bottle, similar to those 
probably used by the hired mourners in the 
story of Jairus's daughter. It was an 
emblem of grief, as truly as the modern 
mourning-band or crepe-veil. To us the 
suggestion of holding a receptacle to one's 
eyes to catch the tears is almost ludicrous. 
And, doubtless, the ancient tear-bottle stood 
for as many insincere tears as certain of our 
formal observances do. But I am thinking 
now of the curious tear-bottle as belonging 
to the threnody of the ages. Not of croco- 
dile tears, as we call them, but of the salt 
of the soul, was the psalmist singing when 
he cried up into the face of God: "Put thou 
my tears into thy bottle." O, the heart- 

187 



188 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

breaks, as anguished as yours or mine, whose 
brine was caught by the tear-bottle! O, the 
stories of human sorrow that could be told, 
perhaps, by my curio from the East! 

I speak of it now, however, only to bring 
before you one of the most moving frag- 
ments of Scripture. It is a sort of tear- 
bottle which holds, still undried, the outbreak 
of a father's sorrow. "O, my son Absalom, 
my son, my son Absalom! Would God I 
had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my 
son!" The literature of sorrow has nothing 
more pitiful, more poignant than that. Put 
it beside the drenchings and upheavings of 
ordinary fiction, and they look foolish. Not 
a word to spare — just a saturate solution of 
grief. If I could read out of the familiar 
words a small fraction of the anguish David 
put into them there would not be a dry eye 
in the house. And if we could sound the 
words to the deeps of them, if we could 
analyze, by some subtle process, the brine of 
this precious tear-bottle, we should know the 
whole tragedy of Absalom's life. 

For my subject is not David but the son 
who broke David's heart. And while every- 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 189 

body knows something about him, the record, 
as usual, is disappointingly meager. Not 
from histories and biographies, at their best, 
do you get the full human story: you must 
examine the tears in the bottle. Dashing, 
brilliant, violent figure is Absalom. He was 
likable, as his father, but without the 
father's loyalty. He had David's courage, 
but not David's conviction. He could "wait" 
as David, but not upon the Lord. He had 
David's passionateness but not his penitence. 
He left a track of light, but it was lurid. 
He lived intensely, and fought bitterly, and 
died foolishly. I want to study him with you, 
now: this man who started wrong. 

I say "started wrong." Maybe I ought 
to say was started wrong. Sometimes I 
wonder how many of the world's trans- 
gressors had a fair start. I mean, before 
they were born, for we really "start" decades, 
if not centuries, before the birth record is 
made. One of the first questions asked con- 
cerning the new arrival is, "Whom is he 
like?" or "Whom does she resemble?" We 
seem to take for granted that originality of 
appearance or manner is hardly to be looked 



190 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

for. And we curiously wonder just what 
part of his physical inheritance the child has 
borrowed. One recalls Richelieu taking in 
his arms the new-born Louis and carrying 
him to the window in order to search the 
child's features more closely. And history 
is pleased to record what he said. Ah, but 
what did the Premier care whom the boy 
"favored" except as furnishing clue to the 
mold of his soul? Shrewd, unscrupulous 
statesman, he was far too wise to hope to 
build things into the soul of the child; he 
was wondering which part of its inheritance 
he could bring out to serve his own ends and 
yield glory to France. 

This indeed is education — both in the good 
and in the sinister meaning of the word. 
According to a primary law of science, you 
cannot take out, whether from a crucible or 
a soul, that which was not already in. 
Education means the bringing out of the 
lawyer or the preacher, the Shylock or the 
wanton that was in the child by inheritance. 
I do not think that you can ever do much 
more than that. You send your boy to school 
that you may discover his "contents.' ' You 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 191 

keep him at school and send him to college in 
order that you may help to evoke the nobler 
traits of his endowment. But all the learned 
institutions of the world, even the hard school 
of life itself, brings out nothing that was not 
already in. 

By way of explaining certain of the ap- 
parent anomalies of life we talk about "re- 
version to type." Thus, for example, the 
dog always tends to show his wolf ancestry. 
And if we feed him too much meat, or treat 
him cruelly, we hurry the revelation. They 
say that if small doses of alcohol be fed to 
a female cat her kittens will be as wild as 
their forbears of the jungle. But, notice 
that we do not make of dog or kitten any- 
thing he was not, by right of parentage, 
entitled to be. So the jungle traits which 
break out of the lives of human beings — the 
terrible ravening of the wolf, the ice-cold 
treachery of the tiger — are pathetic survivals 
of the beast in men and women. 

Here, then, is the solemnity of parent- 
hood. Let me declare it while the year is 
going. To hand down to a child crooked 
limbs, or weak lungs, or defective sight, is 



192 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

bad enough. But to bequeath them the 
squalors and distempers of our souls is im- 
measurably worse. Most of this modern 
emphasis upon eugenics is superficial. We 
are talking about healthy bodies, but what 
about the soul? Jesus said, "Fear not them 
which kill the body, . . . but rather fear him 
which is able to destroy both soul and body." 
Every wanton thought we indulge, every 
inward riot of our nature, every harbored 
suspicion or falsehood, is a means of help- 
ing to dwarf or kill the souls of children yet 
unborn, and of their descendants after them. 
And I believe that the generations yet un- 
born, in whose arteries our blood may flow, 
have prof ounder right to demand of us clean 
thoughts and hallowed practices than they 
have to expect us to abstain from alcohol 
and drugs. 

Several times, since the Lusitania went 
down from a coward's blow in the dark, it 
has been said that the inventor of submarines 
is ashamed of his own device. I should think 
he might be. But, then, how about the 
builders of great guns, and cruel shrapnel, 
and poison gases? Really, they have little to 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 193 

be ashamed of as compared with the man 
who harbors evil in his soul. Perhaps the 
worst that the commander of the submarine 
did when he sank the Ancona was to hurry 
a few more brothers and sisters into the 
presence of God. But to sow in the incal- 
culably broad acres of posterity the seed of 
evil; to sin and to hand down the potency 
of it; to make others go spiritually lame 
because of our crippledoms; to poison the 
wells from which children unto the third 
and fourth generation shall drink — this is 
fearful ! 

Surely, David never meant that. David 
of the twenty-third psalm, of the geolian 
heart, David who panted for God as a hart 
for the water-brooks — I am sure David 
never meant to blight his own son. Ah, 
but, like the most of us, David wanted what 
he wanted, and at once — whether a cup of 
water from the well by the gate of Bethle- 
hem, or the arms of Uriah's wife. And what 
he wanted he took, and Absalom must look 
out for himself. If the son could have in- 
herited David's highest moods only! They 
say that Susanna Wesley never could recon- 



194 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

cile herself to the moral vagabondage of a 
couple of her children. She had prayed and 
cried over them all. Yet two of the children 
who had lain in the arms that cuddled John 
Wesley nearly broke her heart. Was their 
vagabondage the fruit of her own raw moods 
or an entail, through Susanna Wesley, from 
her forbears? Who knows? O, the homes 
that talk much about the children who honor 
their parents, and never even speak the 
names of the dishonoring children! 

But David. By and by the awakening. 
The old days came trooping back, some of 
them filled with memories David would have 
been glad to leave buried. And as David 
looked into the white, dead face of Absalom, 
David saw himself. The father had helped 
make the son. All the untamed animals, all 
the spiritual outlawry of David's nature — 
with the songs and the yearnings — had been 
passed on to Absalom. And Absalom re- 
produced his father's vices, not his virtues. 
Mind, I am not excusing Absalom. Beware 
of blaming upon your ancestors the passions 
you choose to indulge. Let each confess his 
wrong, as if it were all his own. I have no 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 195 

soft word for Absalom; I am merely won- 
dering how David felt when his boy's riotous 
life ended in tragedy, from the boughs of a 
great oak. And, wondering, I think I can 
interpret the bitterness of the cry with which 
I began the chapter: "O, my son Absalom, 
my son, my son Absalom! Would God I 
had died for thee. O, Absalom, my son, my 
son!" 

But I have spent too much time already 
upon the first point. Notice, now, a second. 
Absalom was handicapped by what you 
would call his advantages. He was born 
to the purple. He was strikingly handsome. 
The record says that "from the sole of his 
foot even to the crown of his head there was 
no blemish in him." He had ingratiating 
ways. People liked him and humored him, 
and gave him the better side of the road. 
He had brains too, and courage. In short, 
he fell heir to most of the special privileges 
you would crave for your own children. 
And his advantages helped defeat him, as 
they frequently do. Born to grub his way, 
and to sweat for the bread he ate, with face 
so homely he had to help people to forget it, 



196 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

as Lincoln did, he might have left a fairer 
record. 

A woman said to me once, with a smile of 
sublime complacency, as if she had achieved 
the impossible, "My child does not know the 
meaning of the word 'self-denial.' ' Poor 
mother, and poor child ; and poor child, most 
of all. Not to know the meaning of self- 
denial is not to know one of life's greatest 
words. Why, you cannot even get a kite up 
except against the wind. And how shall we 
expect to do better with a man? The best 
of the world's prizes have been fought for; 
they seldom drop into one's lap. And one 
of the surest ways to defeat a soul is to make 
its path easy. 

Handicapped by advantages! Tell me 
who are apt to get most out of school and 
college. The ten-talent students? I have 
not found it so — except as the brilliant stu- 
dent deliberately and heroically increases the 
load. Always the student who takes most 
out of college is the student who puts in the 
most. And, frequently, he proves to be the 
fellow who fought every inch of the way for 
an education, building fires, selling books, 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 197 

cooking his own meals, and darning his own 
socks. A father told me, not long ago, that 
he threatened his son with calamity if the 
son dared bring home first honors. And the 
son discreetly rested content with second 
honors. Perhaps that particular father 
knew his son. But let this single exception 
prove the rule. For, the rule is that you 
cannot ask too much as the ideal. And if 
there is anything finer than valedictory 
honors, tell your son to win that. At all 
costs let life remain earnest! 

Nearly everybody seemed surprised when 
one of the younger Vanderbilts flung off his 
coat and plunged into work like a plain son 
of Adam, and finally got an important in- 
vention named for him. But why surprised? 
Simply because the world is not accustomed 
to expect great things from the sons of great 
men. Run over the list : Lincoln's son, Glad- 
stone's son, Bismarck's son. But I must not 
weary you. If there be truth in the world's 
expectation, that truth is that the sons missed 
the very discipline which helped make the 
fathers. One of the most normal, and at 
the same time most pernicious, ambitions of 



198 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

a kind father is to plan for the son an easier 
path than the father trod. 

Did you hear of those young bees the 
owner of which felt so sorry for them that 
he helped them break out of their cells? The 
enveloping wax being removed, they came 
out easily. Eureka! But missing the fric- 
tion which God intended them to meet in 
order to loosen their wings, they emerged 
wingless, and were stung to death by their 
companions. Such is life! Like it or not, 
such is life. Without imprisonment I am 
not sure that Cervantes could have written 
Don Quixote; without blindness Milton 
might have missed the glory of "Paradise 
Regained"; without heartbreak Beethoven 
could hardly have written his Ninth Sym- 
phony. Browning's great lines are the 
product of a prophet with a most unmusical 
ear. Paul's immortal ministry was achieved 
against the agony of a thorn. Yet some 
people cry out against the religion of Jesus 
because he demands so much. Man alive, 
that is one of the chief reasons for his not 
being forgotten. You may make a living 
by discounting commercial paper. But you 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 199 

cannot even hope to make heaven by dis- 
counting your soul. Poor Absalom — he had 
so good a start that he lost the race! 

But look at him again. He was mortally 
afflicted with the disease of self-importance. 
I wish there were time to review his story in 
the light of this observation. His arithmetic 
never got beyond "number one." Every- 
thing related itself to him and was appraised 
by him according to its bearing upon his 
own fortunes. Even when a fate more ter- 
rible than death befell his beautiful sister, 
Absalom cut short her cries, and waited two 
weary years until, by vengeance upon his 
foul half-brother, he could better himself. 
He told people frankly that he was fitted to 
be a far wiser king than his father. He 
balked at nothing that seemed to promise 
promotion. He even accepted the infamous 
suggestion of Ahithophel and violated the 
honor of his father's home, not in a moment 
of abandon, but with the express hope of 
winning over part of his father's troops. 
Absalom weighed the whole world against 
himself — and found the scale swinging his 
way. 



200 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

Who does not know the symptoms of the 
disease. Tell me — before the year is older 
grown — why you cast off your one-time 
friend. Why? Because your pride was 
hurt, and sooner than let your pride be 
injured you would give up a friend. Tell 
me how you came to practice your business 
dishonesty, or why you wrought so cruel a 
revenge? As sign of the disease of self-im- 
portance. You saw your own interest so 
much bigger than that of others. I have 
been asked why I do not reply to a certain 
imputation. Honestly, I do not believe I 
can afford to. My case is not so important 
as that. As the youngster reminded the 
man who was "jouncing" the scales : "Mister, 
that don't do no good; you can only weigh 
what you are." And sometimes I fancy that 
this old sin-scarred, tear-stained planet of 
ours would be robbed of most of its shame 
and much of its bitterness if we could take 
ourselves modestly, before God and men. 

But my chapter is nearly done, and I 
have left out large part of the story. You 
will have to read it yourself. It only re- 
mains for me to remind you what happened 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 201 

at the end. Absalom's star sank drearily. 
His army melted like wax; his own life 
snuffed out as he hung suspended from a 
tree by the hair which everybody once envied. 
It is not a pretty story. And so they car- 
ried the news to his father. And the first 
messenger, seeing the look in the king's face, 
could not say what he came to tell. And 
David almost shrieked, "Is the young man, 
Absalom, safe?" And when he knew, he 
went wearily up the steps to the chamber 
over the gate. And as he went, you can 
hear him cry: "O, my son Absalom, my son, 
my son Absalom! Would God I had died 
for thee. O, Absalom, my son, my son!" 



XIV 

THE MAN WHO COULD NOT 
WAIT 

Despite the growing ban against race- 
track gambling, certain of our newspapers 
continue to print lists of "probable winners." 
I do not assume that you are interested in 
forecasts of the sort. Likely you have 
wished that your favorite sheet would cease 
to pander to a notorious evil. May I say 
that it would have ceased long since, and 
the race tracks would have gone out of busi- 
ness if the winners could be, and were, 
truthfully named in advance? What helps 
keep alive and flourishing — in some of our 
States — the race- track evil, is human inabil- 
ity to say with certainty which contestant 
must win. 

I mention an unsavory subject in this 

place and fashion for the purpose of calling 

attention to an interesting fact. The best 

and most decorous of us are constantly nam- 
202 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 203 

ing the probable winners; not on the race 
track, of course, but in the contests of life. 
Rare is the mother who can refrain from 
telling herself which of her children will 
carry off the prize. Not long ago one of 
my own mother's friends quoted to me my 
mother's confident prediction concerning 
her two boys. For one she had no fears ; for 
the other, misgivings many. Nor is it for 
me to say how truthfully she guessed. So 
you may hear teachers pick the winners in 
their classes. They can tell you, to a cer- 
tainty, where an appreciative world will 
bestow its laurels. And they settle back with 
the look of a prophet whose fame is already 
secure. Alas for some of us if such self- 
constituted prophets were uniformly wise in 
their prognostications ! 

Thus, every day, we are tempted to write 
history backward. We name the winners — 
and losers too. We see John B. Gough in a 
drunkard's grave, and Benedict Arnold 
crowned with praise. If God accepted our 
estimates of men, he might doubtless save 
himself a deal of trouble, but what an in- 
describably less interesting and less hopeful 



204 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

world this would be ! "But for the suspended 
plot that is folded in every life," we might 
pick the winners. 

For example, Esau, "the man who could 
not wait." I do not think there is any doubt 
that, as between Esau and Jacob, we should 
have named Esau as the "coming man." In 
the first place, he was the older— by an hour, 
if you please, being one of twins, but still 
the senior. The special blessing of primo- 
geniture — which, for example, would have 
set Clarence on the throne of England, 
ahead of the present king — is not altogether 
factitious. It begins in a new mother's arms. 
No later born child ever quite fills the place 
of the first-born, in a mother's heart. Other 
children may prove more loyal, more re- 
sourceful, more loving. But deep in the soul 
of every mother is the memory of the unique 
joy with which she celebrated the advent of 
her first-born. And it would seem that the 
world had taken cue from its mothers. In 
a hundred ways, some obvious and others 
indirect, we pay tribute to the first-born. 
Esau was Rebekah's first-born. He had 
answered, first, the wistful, wonderful, holy 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 205 

cry of her maidenhood. Jacob, also; her 
favorite in later years; but Esau first. 

In the next place Esau was, apparently, 
the more virile man. And you would have 
picked him for that. He bulked big in 
inches. He had the advantage of a husky 
body — an advantage to which we cease not 
to pay homage. Because he was big and 
brawny he loved the open, where the winds 
sting and the wild things cry at night. Born 
in our day, Esau might have played center or 
tackle on the football team, or carried off 
fistic honors, or gone to Africa for big game. 
He was no hothouse plant: he grew rugged 
outdoors. Men would have nudged each 
other as he passed them in the street, and 
women would have blushed a trifle if they 
caught him looking — he was so much the 
man, in size. For, we are native worshipers 
of size. Not from his photographs would 
you ever suspect that the German emperor 
is small. He is, but he cannot afford to let 
the world know it. Hence when he poses 
for a picture the perspective is always 
arranged in such fashion that the Kaiser 
appears to be the largest figure in the group. 



206 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

Vanity? No doubt; but also grim recog- 
nition of the world's instinctive worship of 
bigness. Esau had that clear advantage 
over Jacob. He made you expect more from 
him. Tradition said that when the twins 
came into the world Jacob's tiny hand was 
on Esau's heel — quaint prediction that any 
advantage of the younger would be got by 
guile. 

But your selection of Esau would seem to 
have a further warrant. He had "taking 
ways." You would pick him for that reason. 
Don't you know how some people walk past 
all our guards and outposts into the very 
citadel of our hearts ? We cannot help loving 
them, as we say. We love them in spite of 
their faults; love them even while they play 
fast and loose with our love. Their hand- 
clasp disarms suspicion: their very look 
melts ice. They are so hearty and chivalric 
they are welcome anywhere. I could name 
you men who, if they were small and stingy 
and lacking in courtesy, would be outlawed 
for the lives they lead, by all good women. 
But because of their open, affectionate way 
— well, I forbear to say what difference it 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 207 

makes. Such a man was Esau. I do not 
think you could have resisted the rough 
charm of him. Everybody liked him. Even 
the old father showed special fondness for 
the boy who brought him venison. And I 
fancy that one reason Rebekah made so much 
of Jacob was because everybody else made 
so much of Esau. No real mother can stand 
that — even when the popular child happens 
to be her own first-born. Why, Esau was 
so good-hearted that he could scarcely hold 
a grudge over night. He forgave the brother 
who had cheated him so outrageously, and 
piled him with presents when Jacob was 
looking for hurt. 

Big, bluff, brotherly Esau. Yet he missed 
the trail. For, as you trace the story of 
the twins you see Esau falter and Jacob 
forging ahead. What shall we make of the 
issue? This is what some would certainly 
make of it: they would make of it another 
instance of divine favoritism. You know 
how, sometimes, we say concerning another 
person's intimate or lover, "Well, I don't 
see what he finds in that man, or she in him." 
Fortunately, perhaps. If there were no 



208 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

freaks in friendship, some of us might have 
no friends. And if a homely man stood no 
chance of finding a woman to love him, some 
of us might still be single. Well enough to 
let other people exercise their own tastes in 
all such matters. 

But God? Must we accord him the same 
right, and for the same half apologetic 
reason? I am sure that a good many of us 
have felt that way as we read the Bible. 
Abraham, the sometime poltroon and liar, 
called in Scripture the "friend of God"; 
Moses, the man with a terrific temper, his 
hands red with the blood of another man, 
yet summoned to Sinai for special audience 
with the Most High; David, vain and 
adulterous, described as the "man after 
God's heart"; Peter, volatile, fretful, per- 
fidious, yet picked for apostleship in the new 
church — surely God has a queer way of 
selecting his friends. Some of us could have 
assisted him had he given us the chance. 

I wonder. I wonder if we could have 
picked more sagaciously than God has. 
There is a whole chapter here — and we must 
get back to Esau. Suffice that I say this, 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 209 

merely, in passing. When you select an 
architect you choose him, presumably, for 
his technical skill. Not for his cleverness 
with the golf-club, nor for special conver- 
sational powers. It will be well for him to 
possess these additional talents; they may 
help him to get business; but, ordinarily, 
you pass them by when you are picking an 
architect for an important building. Simi- 
larly, if your train carries you safely to your 
destination, you do not ask the complexion 
of the engineer or the size of his feet. The 
important matter is that he knows how to 
run his engine. And when God chooses a 
man for some special task he picks a man 
with the necessary gift, or the aptitude for it. 
It by no means follows that the "chosen" is 
best in every respect. And when God 
passes one by, as he did Esau, you must not 
argue that God likes Esau less than he likes 
Jacob. We are not discussing affinities, but 
efficiency. 

At any rate, this much is certain. Esau 
missed the prize of the high calling. The 
younger and less likable brother passed him 
in the race. And the lessons are very plain. 



210 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

Esau was characteristically a man of im- 
pulse. That is one reason we like him. 
Above all others we shrink from cold-blooded 
folks. Great friendships, great sacrifices, 
great deeds are born in the fire of the heart. 
One goes so far as to say that "no love is 
pure that is not passionate" — meaning, I 
suppose, that an unpassionate love is most 
apt to be commercial or worse. But that is 
only one side of the case. On the other are 
the broken vows, the crushed hearts and the 
terrible sacrileges of a love that is certainly 
"passionate." 

When I hear a man described as a "man 
of impulse" I want to know what else he is. 
Tell me that a certain object is a steam- 
engine and you have not told me a great 
deal. So much I might probably have dis- 
covered with the naked eye. What interests 
me quite as much is the strength of the boiler 
and the means of control. An engine that 
will not stop as well as start, or blows up as 
readily as it runs, is not an unqualified suc- 
cess as an engine. So with your man of 
impulse. I am glad to know that his soul 
kindles easily ; but I want also to know what 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 211 

it burns with. Can he direct his heat, or hold 
it in check upon occasion. Esau couldn't! 

If all impulses were good! But when we 
talk about a man of fine impulses it is well 
to remember that fine impulses are not all 
the impulses he has. Wheat and tares grow 
together in the impulsive heart, as in any 
other. And, sometimes, the impulsive man 
seems to cultivate both kinds, with equal 
zeal — because, forsooth, both are in his heart. 
Poor Hetty Sorrel! She was not all bad. 
She was bad and good. And she gave way 
to impulse, of whichever kind it happened to 
be. And poor lovable, execrable Bobby 
Burns! You could no more have escaped 
loving him than you could have missed 
despising him. What a big, tender heart 
he had! — big enough for field mice, and the 
poor, and every woman he met. His trouble 
was that he trusted his heart — a thing you 
can never do unless Jesus Christ reigns in it. 

Here was Esau's mistake. He accepted 
all his impulses as legal tender. He never 
bothered to examine them — until later. 
When he happened to fall in love with a 
woman of a hostile tribe you might as well 



212 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

argue the winds. He loved her; he wanted 
her. That settled the matter. His father 
and mother might break their hearts. That 
was unfortunate but unavoidable, since he 
was the one to be pleased. And when one 
day, returning from the field, he smelled 
Jacob's pottage, his doom was sealed. He 
was not the man to deny himself anything he 
wanted. He reminds me of the good fellow 
who proudly says that when he wants a 
drink he takes it. A sheep does the same — 
and at no other time — and water only. 
"How much better is a man than a sheep?" 
Is he so much better that he can say "No" 
to himself when he wants a thing? Esau 
could not. The savor of the pottage took 
him by storm. In stress of impulse he could 
not even recall the name of the dish Jacob 
was preparing. "That red — yonder," he 
called it. He even fancied he was going to 
die unless he got the pottage. Nothing else 
was too big or sacred to let go, not even his 
birthright. And in a moment the scepter 
passed from Esau to Jacob. As the record 
puts it: "Thus Esau despised his birthright." 
But look again. As a man of impulse 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 213 

Esau was also a man of the moment. He 
was given neither to regrets nor to fore- 
bodings. He lived in the day. And for that 
we like him. So many of our friends cannot 
break away from yesterday. The musty 
odor of the by-gone is about them. They 
will not bury their sorrow even. They keep 
it near by, as a woman of my acquaintance 
kept the ashes of her husband in an urn. 
They will not say a fond farewell to their 
disappointments. Their golden age is in the 
past. Their faces are toward the west. And 
then there are the folks who are moving in 
the atmosphere of to-morrow. They are so 
enamored of the "distant scene" they cannot 
be happy with the present. O, if they would 
only take a little happiness with us now! 

Esau did. He "seized the day," but he 
let everything else go. His calendar had one 
day only. The fame of the "minute man" is 
safe in American history. He was superbly 
"on the job," as we should say. But you 
will find a vast difference between a "minute 
man" and a "man of the minute." Esau 
was the latter. Nothing else mattered as 
compared with the present moment. See 



214< MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

him pleading with his brother. The steam 
of the lentils shut out the glory of his birth- 
right. He was sure he should never live to 
enjoy the blessing of the first-born. Let him 
take what was at hand. 

Have you never heard people talk thus? 
Have you never talked thus yourselves? 
This is the plea for a thousand excesses of 
our day; that life is short, and we shall be 
so "long-time dead." Subtle or openly 
defiant, tinged with infinite wistfulness — as 
if the Father's children could not quite 
forget the Father's house: or filled with 
scorn — as if, like George Eliot in her mock- 
ing days, we had been wakened from a bad 
dream; so is the plea of Esau to-day. But 
it is the plea of Esau. It has no yesterday 
and no to-morrow. It is without holy 
memory or burning hope. It is the cry of 
the man of the moment. 

Lastly, Esau was a man of unfaith. I 
have said that already, in other language: 
then, let me say it in so many words. Esau 
missed the mark because he was a man of 
unfaith. Need I remind you that no man 
of unfaith ever greatly succeeds, or finally 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 215 

arrives ? We sometimes talk as if faith were 
a religious exercise. So it is — but in the 
largest sense. It is the ability of a man to 
link himself up with the immensities and 
the eternities. "Without faith," declared 
the great apostle, "it is impossible to please 
God." Of course. And without faith it is 
impossible to hold a friend, or win a cam- 
paign, or negotiate the real business of the 
soul. Your great discoverers and great 
scientists and great philosophers are almost 
apostolic in faith, only some of them stop 
before they reach Jesus Christ. They seem 
to exalt all kinds of faith, except the most 
beautiful faith of all — that is, the faith which 
remakes the soul. 

Did you notice how the New Testament 
describes Esau — as a "profane person"? I 
do not understand that to mean that he used 
bad language. Perhaps he did. 'Tis the 
impulsive man who does most of the swear- 
ing. But "profane" signifies lacking a 
shrine. It means that a man has no holy of 
holies ; never veils his eyes ; trusts himself so 
far only as he can see. The best of life is 
beyond present sight and ken. 



XV 

THE MAN WHO COULD NOT 
FIND ROOM 

Coming up Chesapeake Bay at night a 
few months ago I found myself keenly 
interested in the play of the steamer's 
searchlight. Here it picked out a vessel in 
the distance, yonder a building on shore. 
And having served its purpose of informa- 
tion or entertainment, the light moved on 
through its brilliant arc. Yet even after the 
great eye stopped furnishing its revelations, 
I kept some of the vivid images revealed. 
And I can easily recall them now. You 
have had the same experience as your train 
slipped through village or countryside at 
night. The light from your car window set 
in sudden relief a tree or stream, cattle 
asleep, or perhaps a mother with her baby in 
her arms. And the train swept on through 
the darkness, and not even the woman with 
the baby in her arms knew that you were 

216 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 217 

carrying with you her swiftly given photo- 
graph. 

Somewhat similarly, blazing souls light 
up others, and what we call "history" is par- 
tial record of the illumination. All natures 
are incandescent, more or less; it remains, 
however, for certain great figures, not always 
pure or good, to show others to us. Well 
enough, for example, to remind ourselves of 
the service rendered Dr. Johnson by his 
biographer. But apart from Johnson 
Bos well himself would never have been 
heard of. The light of the greater fell upon 
the less. Much has been made of Cleopas 
Breckenridge, the man whom in boyhood 
Lincoln induced to sign the pledge, telling 
him that 'twould prove the best day's work 
the boy ever did. But what likelihood that 
the world would have been at pains to re- 
member Cleopas Breckenridge unless he had 
fallen within the flaming arc of Abraham 
Lincoln's great soul? 

One recalls the stray dog to which Jacob 
Riis gave, in his autobiography, a sort of 
immortality. Poor, unloved, unwanted mon- 
grel, he had huddled close to Riis when the 



218 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

latter was wandering the streets of the city. 
And even that momentary adjacence to a 
beautiful soul rescued the beast from 
oblivion, if not from death at the hands of 
a brutal policeman. 

But I am not thinking now of incan- 
descent souls in general. I am thinking of 
One who lighted up into immortality of 
remembrance, as none other ever could, a 
host of commonplace people. Save Saul of 
Tarsus, and Herod, with a few others, I 
suppose that most of the names familiar to 
us through the New Testament, would have 
faded from the memory of men long ago like 
writing in the sand. Now that we come to 
think of it, what a host of people Jesus saved 
from f orgetf ulness as well as from their sins ! 
Because his supernal light fell upon them 
we know Andrew and Bartimseus, Mary and 
Martha, and a bright host of others. Even 
Pilate and Caiaphas are more sharply de- 
fined figures for the shining of Jesus. Why, 
we remember the thieves on their crosses, 
and the men who drove the nails, by reason 
of their relation to our Lord. He picked 
out for remembrance of the ages, souls that 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 219 

within a few hours or years forgot them- 
selves. And we see them, now, shining with 
goodness or dark with evil, in the light of 
Jesus. 

Thus he saved for our Christmas study a 
certain ancient tavern and its much berated 
keeper. Perhaps it would have been kinder 
to leave them unremembered, at least so they 
would have escaped a flood of maledictions, 
for we are alarmingly prompt to tell what 
others ought to have done under certain con- 
ditions. Like that English woman who, one 
day, in the presence of Carlyle, poured forth 
upon the contemporaries of Jesus the vials 
of her scorn. How different her reception 
of him would have been, if she had been 
given the chance! Unfortunately, she 
pressed the gruff old Scot for an answer. 
And this is what she got : "Madam, if Jesus 
had come to England, rebuking our sins and 
exposing our hypocrisies, we should have 
cried, 'Take him to Newgate and hang 
him.' " 

In the spirit of that caution I want you 
to study with me the man who, according to 
tradition, found "no room in the inn" for 



220 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

Mary and her Boy. Frankly, we do not 
know anything about him, not even his name. 
I cannot prove that this world-famous little 
hostelry had a proprietor or manager, in any 
modern sense of the words. But somehow, 
in the passing radiance of the light that never 
was on land or sea, we seem to catch glimpses 
of him. And so with the chimes of Christmas 
still echoing in our souls I want to study him 
with you — this man who could find no room 
for Jesus to be born. 

And the first thing to say about him is 
that he was a plain tavern-keeper as we are 
plain tradesmen or teachers or housewives. 
If anybody ever criticized him to his face, 
for his inhospitality on the first Christmas 
Eve, I am sure we can sympathize with his 
reply. He was neither saint nor prophet. 
He was merely an innkeeper earning a 
living. How could he be expected to foresee 
the glory of the place where a certain Babe 
should be born? You know how quick we 
are to claim our limitations — when others 
are calling us beyond them. Just as Moses 
did when God called him to a bigger field. 
Just as Isaiah did when God challenged him 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 221 

with a great commission. Just as most of 
our brothers do when we give them sight of 
a spiritual promotion. Some of the most 
eloquent speeches I ever listened to were 
made by men and women in defense of their 
own limitations. We are constantly telling 
God and each other what we cannot be ex- 
pected to do. 

If war came to this country, and con- 
scription followed, you can hardly guess the 
faulty eyes and constitutional disabilities 
that would suddenly be discovered. Men 
who had previously considered themselves 
physically sound, and experienced no diffi- 
culty whatever in getting all the life insur- 
ance they could pay for, would forthright 
find how frail they were. O the pitiful 
stories that could be told by any recruiting 
officer ! But we need not waste heat on sup- 
posititious cases. Here are men who say 
they would be members of the church if they 
knew how to control their tempers. Here 
are people telling you how generous they 
would be if the wealth of Rockefeller or 
Carnegie were theirs. Here are church 
members who would be saints but for their 



222 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

present business. And here are disciples 
who would be glad to teach Sunday school 
classes, or win their clerks and comrades to 
Jesus Christ — if only! 

O, shame! God calls to no service or 
heroism for which he fails to qualify the 
called. He shows the wonders of his skill, 
not upon our obvious excellencies, but upon 
our crudities and limitations. Look! Peter 
was a born coward, and John a natural fire- 
eater, and Zacchseus was in a bad business. 
Luther was narrow, and Wilberforce dis- 
sipated, and Lincoln a raw backwoodsman. 
"Old Put," as they called him, was a farmer, 
and Carey a shoemaker, and Billy Sunday 
a ball-player. God took them as they were, 
and made them such as we know them. 
When a man assures me what beautiful work 
he could do if he had proper tools, I know 
that he will probably never do any beautiful 
work. But the man who "has it in him" can 
show it me, with a pen knife, on a gnarled 
stick or a fragment of clay. So God. He 
wastes no time telling us the miracles he 
could work on born saints and spiritual 
prodigies. He goes to work on "Jack" 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 223 

Kilrain, or Sam Hadley, or John B. Gough, 
or anyone who will give him a chance. 

But the innkeeper of Bethlehem? Hon- 
estly, I do not think he was a monster of 
indifference. And instead of telling how 
much better we could have done in his place, 
suppose we ask how much better we really 
do, considering our rich advantages. He 
did no worse than we constantly do when 
we decline to make room for Jesus. He 
was by profession a hotel-keeper, as we 
should say. His business was to make his 
caravansarie the best known and most popu- 
lar in the countryside. And he could hardly 
be expected to turn far aside for the pur- 
pose of meeting the needs of an exigent 
case. Business is business — and sentiment 
and kindness, pity and religion belong to 
another realm. Speaking of hotels, you 
would be astounded if the proprietor of one 
of our great hostelries gave any more atten- 
tion to you than to a tile in the floor. You 
would not know him if you saw him. And 
you could not get to him if your room were 
on fire or your heart were broken. He is 
behind partitions "practicing his profession'* 



224 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

And whatever else he may be, he will be 
professional to the end of the chapter. Let 
the shoemaker "stick to his last," or he will 
make poor shoes. 

Yes, let the shoemaker "stick to his last." 
But let him remember that he is a man in a 
world of men. And there are other things 
the world needs, even more than it needs 
good shoes, or wholesome bread, or honest 
garments. 

There are lonely hearts to cherish 
While the days are going by. 

And there are souls to be made, and vaga- 
bonds to be got home, and great missions to 
undertake, and God himself to be enter- 
tained in our lives. And, O, the fearful 
losses we suffer while we are practicing our 
chosen profession, sticking to our last. Here 
was the trouble with priest and Levite in 
the parable. Both saw the wounded man 
by the roadside. One of them went so far 
as to cross the road to get a better look. I 
suppose that both were sorry for him. But 
they had appointments that day. And if 
they paused to minister, they might miss an 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 225 

appointment with God in the temple. But 
think of the greater chance they missed by 
their absorbing professionalism. Maybe the 
Samaritan was busy too. Most of the 
world's rarest service is rendered by the 
busiest people. And when a man tells me 
he is "too busy" to practice the healing of 
souls or to play the Christian, I scarcely 
know whether to smile or to groan. I assume 
that the good Samaritan was a busy man. 
But the most immortal piece of business he 
ever did was by the wayside, on a broken 
fellow-pilgrim. 

The business of Gladstone was statecraft, 
but he was remembered more tenderly, I 
suppose, by the sick crossing-sweeper he vis- 
ited than by any of his supporters in Parlia- 
ment. Dr. Bernardo was by profession a 
physician, but who shall estimate the glory of 
his ministry among the waifs of London? 
Grant was a soldier, but he was so much more 
than a man of uniform and military codes 
that he graciously declined to accept Lee's 
proffered sword; and you see him entering 
Richmond holding a little child by the hand. 
Paul was a preacher, but how intimate he 



226 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

was in the shepherding of the flock! Jesus 
was Redeemer. For that he came, that he 
might "save his people from their sins." But, 
to the dismay of his disciples, he was so 
utterly unprofessional that he could be inter- 
rupted at any time by a cry of hunger or 
helplessness. 

Be the lawyer, or salesman, or surgeon or 
teacher. Act the part. Practice your pro- 
fession. Carry the marks — so that men may 
recognize you, as they do some clergymen 
by the cut of their coats. But remember 
what else God calls you to be. And be 
watchful lest, some day, in your devotion to 
your profession you close your door against 
Jesus. 

But the Bethlehem innkeeper: we are not 
done with him yet. And even if I romance 
about him, I am sure I shall not wander far 
from the facts. He ran his tavern — just as 
you run your dry goods or insurance office — 
to make money. He rose in the morning, 
just as you do, to make more money. He 
estimated in terms of the money-changers 
his success as a man. Perhaps if you could 
have shown him the financial advantage of 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL <W 

making room for Mary, the story would 
have read differently. But that is another 
matter. I always shudder when I hear men 
begin to tell how much more money they 
have made since they gave their hearts to 
God. Seriously, I do not believe God comes 
to help us make money — except . . . 

What do you make money for? Why, 
to buy clothes and food, in order that you 
may be able to go down town again to- 
morrow to make more money: so that you 
may buy still other food and clothes, and 
thus make yet more money, and buy more 
clothes and food. 

Was a more pitiful circle ever conceived 
for the soul of a man to swing through? 
To make money and to buy ! It is like feed- 
ing a dog for the sake of keeping breath in 
his body, or like purchasing an automobile 
without expectation of using it, or like col- 
lecting pictures and hiding them in safe 
deposit vaults, or like marrying a woman in 
order to get a housekeeper. Men of trade, 
we are not sent into the world to make money 
any more than we are sent here to breathe 
and eat meals. All these other functions 



228 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

are incidental to the real business on which 
God sent us. The real business of life is to 
"make our souls," as the French say, and to 
help other people to make theirs. Our real 
business is spiritual, and we sell goods, or 
plead cases, or keep books, in order to pay 
expenses. 

Blessed be God for the new emphasis on 
tithing; for the recovered truth of steward- 
ship: for all voices, whether of pain or joy, 
which set in its true light the function of 
making money. I see by the papers that 
certain New York restaurants served ostrich 
last holiday season. Anything to be differ- 
ent, anything to help people spend their 
money. So in Rome, in the fateful days 
before her fall, they dissolved pearls in 
vinegar, and cooked peacocks' tongues, for 
the epicure. I wonder what men think 
money is for! By contrast, I remind you of 
Jenny Lind, praying that she might be per- 
mitted to live two years more, in order to 
earn money enough to complete the orphans' 
home she had started. You could not hurt 
with money a soul like that. And if you 
thought of your earnings thus, I could pray 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 229 

God to double your income. How do you 
think of it? 

But to return to our friend the innkeeper 
for a further lesson. Much has been made 
of the embarrassment of his position. Any 
tavern-keeper would hesitate to offer hospi- 
tality under similar conditions. The hour 
was late, and perhaps he did not quite believe 
Mary's story. With less reason than he had 
you have turned folks from your doors. But 
of what I am suggesting, the record gives 
no hint. Maybe he was the kindest man in 
the world; but the inn was full. That is all 
the Scriptures say: "And she brought forth 
her first-born son, and . . . laid him in a 
manger, because there was no room for them 
in the inn" Just crowded out — nothing 
worse and nothing better than that. Merely 
crowded out. 

So to-day. Men do not deny Jesus Christ 
nowadays, at least not with loud oaths and 
blasphemy. They do not even despise him. 
They respect him, and pay him a certain sort 
of homage. I could quote you pages of 
tributes to Jesus from the lips of skeptics 
and freethinkers. The tragedy to-day is 



230 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

that men cannot find room for Jesus Christ. 
Their interests are so many, and the claims 
upon their strength so various, Jesus gets 
the "go-by." Some one names the follow- 
ing as the greatest lines Browning ever 

wrote : 

I say— 
The acknowledgment of God in Christ, 
Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee 
All questions in the world and out of it, 
And hath so far advanced thee to be wise. 

But the deeper fact is that our reason does 
not need Jesus Christ so keenly as our hearts 
do. "No room for Jesus! And is your 
heart so full, my brother? No room for 
Jesus when Jesus is your only hope? No 
room for Jesus when salvation never crosses 
any threshold where his feet have not been 
set? No room for Jesus when, except by 
Jesus, there is no eternal life?" 



XVI 

THE MAN WHO BLAMED 
OTHERS 

To say the least, Aaron was a poor re- 
porter. To say the most — but that is the 
point of my story. For the moment, then, 
I content myself with characterizing Aaron 
as a poor reporter. Most people are. To 
tell what really transpired in a given in- 
stance is always difficult. It is difficult even 
when we are not personally involved, either 
for praise or blame. And when we are in- 
volved a correct account is next to impos- 
sible. Here we are trying, every day, to 
make head or tail out of the conflicting 
reports of the war. We lay down the paper 
with a sigh. To judge from dispatches from 
Paris, the tide is going one way ; but accord- 
ing to Berlin, the same tide is moving in a 
contrary direction. Nor is all responsibility 
for the divergence to be charged to the 
censors. The fact is that no two persons 

23X 



232 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

ever reported, in equivalent terms, the same 
event. And when not even the most truth- 
fully inclined reporter can keep out of his 
narration his personal sympathies and hopes, 
what can you expect ? 

Try it yourself. Attempt to tell your 
friend or your family how the automobile 
happened to collide with the trolley car — 
particularly if you chanced to be driving the 
automobile. Be the most veracious man in 
the world, and you will not succeed in tell- 
ing the same story the other man tells. Try 
to detail a certain interview in which you 
figured: then listen while another party to 
the interview gives his account. You will 
be interested, at least, in the discrepancies. 
Sometimes I fancy that most of our mis- 
understandings might be spared, and large 
part of the world's bitterness gone if, even 
with the best intentions, we could see things 
fairly, and report them as they are. 

But Aaron. Recall what had just oc- 
curred. His brother had stayed in the mount 
too long for his people's patience. It is 
always hard to keep a crowd up to concert 
pitch. Israel was so much like us that she 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 233 

wanted gods similar to her neighbors. So, 
at Aaron's suggestion, she brought her gold 
ornaments together. And Aaron melted the 
trinkets into a mass and shaped it in the 
semblance of a calf and bade the people 
worship. That is what happened, according 
to the record. Now, observe how differently 
Aaron reported to his brother. I may say 
that any sin looks different when somebody 
else looks at it with you. By the time Moses 
had gotten down from the mount Aaron 
experienced a change of heart with respect 
to his handiwork. Hence, omitting most of 
the story, he reported the transaction thus: 
"They gave it me: then I cast it into the fire, 
and there came out this calf." Poor, poor 
Aaron ! You would think him the most sur- 
prised man of them all, when forth from 
the furnace came the shameful idol. Not 
a word about the arrangements he had made ; 
not a whisper about the mold ; not a hint con- 
cerning the graving tool he used. Nothing 
but innocent astonishment that such a mon- 
strous result could follow so harmless an act. 
"I cast it into the fire, and there came out 
this calf." If Aaron were the only man to 



234 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

make such shift of responsibility, I could not 
understand it. But, alas! I find men and 
women constantly doing the very same thing. 
For example, did you notice any one of the 
European combatants confessing blame for 
starting the war? I had not noticed it. Off 
hand, it would appear that some particular 
nation must have set the torch. Such con- 
flagrations do not result from spontaneous 
combustion. Somebody must be responsible. 
And each side is charmingly frank in con- 
fessing for the other. But, thus far, I have 
not heard either side assume the blame. Or, 
to narrow our view, let your child be guilty 
of a misdemeanor. Suppose he breaks the 
vase, or gets into a fight, or comes in late 
for dinner. Does he look you straight in 
the eye and admit unreservedly his fault? 
Or does he admit so much only as leaves him 
practically clear? Why, they go so far as 
to say that the classical instance of George 
and the cherry tree is apocryphal. And 
even if the thing really happened, we might 
discover that George admitted less than we 
supposed. He cut down the tree because 
it was infested with gypsy-moths, or his 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 235 

mother needed kindling wood, or the teacher 
told him he must take more exercise. So 
inveterate is the excusing practice among 
children that if your child displayed a dift- 
ferent spirit you would be alarmed; you 
would be afraid he was going to die. 

Ah, but why should I pick on the little 
folks when here are the rest of us, from 
whom the children learn ? Here is a business 
man who has lost his ideals. At least he 
acts as if he had lost them. He does things 
which he would have scorned years ago. He 
has been growing callous to the finer touches 
of life. There is a cold, hard look in his eye, 
and his voice has roughened. And when you 
reproach him, when for an instant, now and 
again, he stands in the white light of God's 
open day, what does he say? This, usually: 
that the street has made him what he is. He 
did not plan it, or wish it, or even consent. 
Forces stronger than his ideals seized him 
and made a plaything of him. He cast in 
the gold and there came out this unhallowed 
shape. 

Or here is a woman who has been growing 
"worldly," as we say. I do not refer to the 



236 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

modishness of her costume, nor to her fond- 
ness for bridge-whist, nor yet to her clamor 
for equal suffrage. I am thinking of a cer- 
tain indefinable spirit which the best of us 
always, and the worst of us in our best 
moments, never become reconciled to, in 
women. A young man of the day was tell- 
ing me how he happened to select his wife. 
"The first time I met her," he said, quite 
artlessly, "she was the only girl at the table 
who did not drink cocktails and smoke 
cigarettes.'' He used both, without scruple, 
but he picked his wife because she used 
neither. Back in the soul of every decent 
man is a sort of reverence for women. I 
think every woman knows it. She ought to 
thank God for it. And when she begins to 
sacrifice it to the gods of the day, when she 
learns to put a price on everything, knowing 
the value of nothing; when she feels within 
herself the chill of tragedy, this is what she 
usually does. She blames the age she lives 
in. Had she been born in grandmother's 
day, the event might have been different. 
But times have changed, and she with them. 
How could she be expected to stave off the 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 237 

inevitable? She merely cast into the fire the 
gold of her womanhood and there came 
forth this deplorable result. 

Or see the same dodging in another realm. 
Robert G. Ingersoll used to say that his 
father's Puritanism made the son a scoffer. 
And one of the great French infidels laid all 
the blame at the door of an infidel poem he 
had been obliged to learn in childhood. Did 
you never hear the same specious plea? 
Have you never made it on your own behalf? 
Skepticism is not arrogant nowadays: it is 
apologetic. It has a wistful look and a 
minor tone. It confesses the loneliness of 
Clifford over the death of the "Great Com- 
panion." It sails by dead reckoning, having 
no glimpse of the Sun of Righteousness. 
But it is not frank. It blames the books of 
the day, or the speculative questions men are 
asking, or the delinquencies of church mem- 
bers. Unbelief is merely an unfortunate 
result. The skeptic cast his creed into the 
fire and, alas! there came out this hideous 
thing. 

But why should I multiply instances? 
Rare is the man or the woman who stands 



238 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 






up and takes the blame for weakness or 
treachery, cruelty or self-indulgence. The 
rest of us do what Aaron did: we shift the 
blame to the furnace. 

Why? Well, in the first place, because we 
cannot bear to lose caste in the opinion of 
others. Aaron felt himself scorching under 
the rebuking eyes of his brother. He had 
heard the stone tables splinter on the hillside, 
in Moses's terrible anger. Aaron must win 
back, somehow, his brother's confidence: 
hence he blamed the furnace. Don't believe 
anybody who assures you that he does not 
care a farthing for other people's opinions. 
The man who does not care what other 
people think of his conduct, has not yet been 
born — or is in an asylum. Even the libertine 
who flaunts his profligacy in your face, 
cares what you think. He wants you to 
admit what a perfect devil he is. That is 
one part of his satisfaction — that he shocks 
the neighbors. And, O, the pitiful subter- 
fuges the rest of us practice in our efforts 
to keep up appearances. 

You cannot tell a man's circumstances by 
his coat. The saddest poverty in the world 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 289 

is proud poverty. You can see his coat, but 
you cannot see his stomach. Hence, many a 
man will starve his body before he will let 
you see him wear a shabby coat. I have 
known a pauper to spend his last nickel, 
almost, for a shoe-polish. Such shifts we 
make to keep from the world the facts. 
Never shall I forget the afternoon I sur- 
prised my friend by coming upon him in an 
abandon of grief. He that bore his hurts 
so stoically; who was morbidly afraid to let 
the world know what tender heart he had; 
thinking himself alone, had let go. And I, 
unwitting, walked in upon him. I shall not 
repeat the remark he made ; it was more ex- 
pressive than elegant. It amounted to this 
— that he would have given a hundred dollars 
rather than have me catch him in such un- 
dress of soul. Proud, dear fellow; I could 
but love him more for his shame! 

But we are never quite so anxious as 
when we try to blind folks to our sins. In 
the realm of morals we must keep up appear- 
ances at any cost. And one handy way is 
to blame the fire for what we are. A man 
explained to me elaborately how he came to 



240 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

be profane. He said that his early days were 
spent in the stockyards, where everybody 
swore. But why should he be at pains to 
tell me that ? Simply because he wanted me 
to feel that, by nature, he was too good a 
fellow to indulge such a wretched habit. 
Specifically, he was confessing the power of 
a bad habit; really, though perhaps half 
unconsciously, he was bidding for my full 
respect. When a dissolute fellow tells you 
that college made him what he is, what is he 
driving at? This, manifestly: he wants you 
to rate him higher than his present grade. 
He cannot live comfortably with your con- 
demnation, expressed or implied. Hence he 
blames the furnace for the shape you despise. 
So, in a thousand ways, we emulate Aaron 
in his effort to keep his brother's good 
opinion. Most of us have the grace to be 
ashamed of our faults, even when we enter- 
tain no intention of lopping them off. The 
golden calf is an altered object when Moses 
joins us in looking at it. Possibly we expect 
to worship it again as soon as Moses's back 
is turned. Meantime we prefer him to think 
us too good for such practices. 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 241 

But look again at Aaron's specious plea. 
And I think that you will discover that 
Aaron was doing more than attempt to 
justify himself in the eyes of his brother; 
he was also attempting to justify himself in 
his own eyes. He had not only to live with 
Moses, he had to live with himself. And he 
would be vastly happier if he could hold 
himself guiltless of intentional sin. At least 
that is the way of the human heart. You 
have instance of it on the first pages of the 
Bible. Hear Adam: "caught with the 
goods," as we should say. Hear him plead 
extenuation. "The woman whom thou 
gavest to be with me, she gave me, . . . 
and I did eat." (By the way, the woman's 
argument was not much nobler: she blamed 
the serpent. But I am speaking of the man. ) 
Adam was not trying merely to avert judg- 
ment; he was trying to believe in himself. 
He could not bear to be shrunken in his 
own guilty eyes. He wanted to feel himself 
undamaged by his transgression. He was 
the passive instrument in the hands of a 
crafty woman, hence innocent. Or, open 
another book, and at the tragedy of Mac- 



242 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

beth. You recall the man's feverish longing 
to be king. To that end he was willing to 
lay every means under contribution. He 
would not stop at murder even. But hear 
him plead his own innocence: 

"If chance will have me king, why chance may 
crown me, 
Without my stir." 

Shakespeare knew the human heart as few 
interpreters have known it. He knew that 
a guilty Macbeth could not even enjoy the 
fruits of his own crime, except as he per- 
suaded himself that they really dropped into 
his waiting hands, without his "stir." 

But we do not need to turn for examples 
to Shakespeare or the Bible. Here are we: 
never more eloquent than when we plead 
our case at the bar of our own conscience. 
A man cannot live on indefinitely, both un- 
forgiven and unjustified in his own sight. 
He must square himself with himself. If 
he is not ready to ask forgiveness, he must 
argue that he does not need it. The most 
difficult task in the world is not to live with 
your neighbors or your family; the most 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 243 

difficult task is to live with yourself. And it 
is for aid in the undertaking that we use 
Aaron's plea. Myself or the furnace, one 
or the other must bear the blame. Better 
the furnace — which has no conscience. "I 
cast it into the fire and there came out this 
calf." 

So much for the picture as it is: let me 
draw it as it might have been. For, our 
hope lies in improving upon Aaron. Into 
the home of my friend came a baby dread- 
fully marked from birth. There were other 
children, six of them, all sound and attrac- 
tive. Then came the lassie who almost broke 
his heart. Did he repudiate her? So the 
Spartans might have done. Not so my 
friend — or I should be ashamed to call him 
"friend." The disfigured baby was his in 
the same sense as were the perfect children 
of his home. And with breaking heart and 
wide-open purse he owned her completely. 
No pains or love was spared. She was his. 
He claimed her. 

Did you ever think of doing that with 
your sin? Claiming your sin? O, not as I 
have heard men, with noisy vehemence, as if 



244 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

they were proud of their sins. This is the 
note which sometimes offends us in the testi- 
mony of redeemed rascals: they seem to 
parade their former sins. 

I do not mean that, of course. I mean, a 
sorrowful claiming of one's faults with the 
same frank ownership one asserts to his 
virtues. You have no more right to deny 
parentage to your sin than to a homely 
child. It is yours. Common honesty de- 
mands that you do the thing Aaron would 
not do: confess your sin as your own. 

Moreover — and here the light breaks in 
like a flood — that way lies forgiveness. God 
can forgive a man, not a furnace. "If we 
confess our sins, he is faithful and just to 
forgive us our sins." But not when we 
blame the furnace. Recall that tense mo- 
ment in which David saw himself. At first 
he cried out in rage. Then he broke down 
in shame. "I have sinned," he said. He 
admitted his own progeny of evil. He 
claimed his fault, with grief. And back came 
the most beautiful word that ever falls upon 
human ears: "The Lord hath put away thy 
sin." Suppose he had blamed the furnace? 



XVII 

THE MAN WHO FACED BOTH 
WAYS 

In a sense, every man is two-faced. As 
one of our modern poets has it: 

God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures 
Boasts two soul-sides : one to face the world with, 
The other to tell a woman when he loves her. 

In that sense there are no single-faced folks. 
Only a man of putty or iron can turn to the 
woman he loves the same face he shows to 
his business competitors. Carlyle, sitting, 
whole evenings through, with his dear old 
mother, in absolute content ; or yearning for 
her like a homesick boy, in his latter years, 
is a different Scot from the Carlyle who 
scathed England for her shams. I do not 
think that little children would have held out 
coaxing arms to our Lord while he was driv- 
ing the money-changers from the temple. 
There is an outward mconsistency which wit- 

245 



246 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

nesses to the deepest inward consistency. 
Thus a man may be most profoundly him- 
self when he seems altered. In this sense 
the very best people you know are "two- 
faced," and ought to glory in it. Even God 
changes his aspect when we change our ways 
from evil to good — or contrariwise. 

Needless to say, then, that such double- 
facedness needs no essay, except in praise. 
I am thinking of a very different variety; 
the sort we despise in a dog or a man. And 
for want of a better example I have selected 
Balaam. Frankly, I do not know how to 
classify Balaam. I do not know whether to 
rank him with sinners or saints. He whiffled 
about like a weather-vane in unsettled 
weather. The moment you think you can 
put your finger on him, he is somewhere else. 
Even the man who tried to bribe him finally 
gave him up in despair. Balaam had the 
discomfiting combination of itching palm 
and New England conscience. He was a 
real prophet, but with dark, subterranean 
instincts. He lacked courage to do what he 
wanted to do. Not for a houseful of silver 
and gold would he go a hairsbreadth "beyond 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 247 

the word of the Lord, to do less or more," 
yet he would give God ample opportunity to 
change the troublesome word. Poor, para- 
doxical Balaam, how shall I classify him? 

But, so far as that goes, how shall I 
classify anybody? This business of separat- 
ing the sheep from the goats is not so simple 
as it sometimes appears. Every competent 
teacher knows that the most searching exam- 
inations ever devised fail to discriminate 
justly between pupils. The millionaire is 
not necessarily a better business man than 
his clerk. In a burst of enthusiasm for the 
old political regime, an apologist recently 
threw down his glove before this proposition : 
that only the best men in the State ever 
reach the governor's chair. O, if only it were 
true! And you may recall that one of our 
most popular novelists said that the best 
women rarely fall in love with the best men. 

And when we attempt to draw dividing 
lines, what sorry work we make! I can 
distinguish as between the genus wolf and 
the genus tiger. I may even differentiate 
among the various branches of the duck 
family— as the canvasback, the hornbill, the 



248 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

black-head, and all the rest. I may learn 
how to separate scientifically the Malay 
from the Mongol, the Teuton from the Slav. 
But who shall tell me how to divide the sheep 
from the goats? There is no genus "sinner'' 
or genus "saint." A "sinner" is a potential 
saint gone wrong; and a saint is, more often 
than not, a "sinner" saved by grace. The 
worst reprobate in the city has in him still the 
imperishable seeds of goodness, while the 
most beautiful soul still confesses kinship 
with the beast. Science has lately informed 
us that the blood of English and African is 
identical in constituents and qualities. Put 
under a microscope a drop from the veins of 
a Bushman and a drop from the veins of a 
Virginian, and not even the shrewdest 
analyst can tell which is which. So, in each 
one of us, the savage contends with the 
Christian, Nero with Paul. None are wholly 
good, none irredeemably bad. Enough bad 
in the best and enough good in the worst to 
keep everybody humble. 

How, then, shall I classify Balaam? I 
do not even try. Nor do I think that Balaam 
could classify himself. Who can? We may 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 249 

still hear the vociferous Pharisee, out in 
front of the temple, calling upon heaven and 
earth to witness that he "was not as other 
men," especially the publican. But if the 
Pharisee had been as sure as he seemed, he 
might have lowered his voice. We are never 
quite so vehement as in affirmation of what 
we do not wholly believe. Let a man have 
a settled conviction and he can take it to bed 
with him. He does not need to sit up half 
the night warning off the dogs of heresy. 
'Tis the unconvinced man who makes most 
of the noise. And he uses the noise to help 
him make up his mind. No, the Pharisee 
was not so sure as he seemed. In the quiet 
of his own heart he saw his own "wilderness 
side," as Brierly calls it. Benvenuto Cellini 
has left on record, impartially set down, his 
seraphic raptures and his most unhallowed 
amours. He seems to narrate the one with 
as much gusto as the other. It is a weirdly 
strange confession, as if he would fling upon 
posterity the task he could not assume for 
himself — that of taking his own moral grade. 
Goethe, in his "Confessions of a Beautiful 
Soul," makes that soul cry out, in full, terri- 



250 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

fying view of its own hidden evil, "Great 
God, what a discovery!" Imagine, then, 
such a "beautiful soul" called upon to pass 
judgment upon itself; to name its eternal 
destiny. 

Such is the dilemma of every one of us. 
You may tell me, of course, that when a 
man goes wrong he knows it. Something 
within tells him that he has missed the mark. 
Usually so. And you will also say that 
when a man goes straight he has the ap- 
proval of his conscience. And that too is 
commonly the case. Ah, if life were as 
simple as that! But when the same man 
goes both right and wrong ; when he gets up 
from his knees to scold the children or plan 
a questionable business deal; or when, from 
the far country of spiritual vagabondage, he 
suddenly falls unaccountably homesick for 
the Father's house, the problem becomes very 
complex. In each man both Dr. Jekyll and 
Mr. Hyde. But in Stevenson's famous 
story Dr. Jekyll knew himself to be the real 
man, even when he was doing damnable 
things as Mr. Hyde. Whereas, some of us 
could hardly name our real self, whether 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 251 

saint or rascal. Most of us are probably 
credited with good deeds enough, if they 
could be kept separate, to land us in heaven. 
And most of us have probably been guilty 
of baseness enough, if it could be treated as 
a thing apart, to land us in perdition. The 
trouble is that good and evil are inextricably 
mixed in our lives. Who but God can dis- 
tinguish the wheat from the tares, and say 
if the field is worth while ? 

But Balaam. For the purpose of sharp- 
ening the points already made, I need not 
have selected Balaam. Any other familiar 
character would have served as well — say 
Joseph, or Peter, or even Paul himself. 
Balaam's case was different, and more 
serious. Balaam was the man who never 
could quite make up his mind. See him at 
the opening of the story, moving from place 
to place in the hope of seeing duty from a 
different angle: then see him, near the close 
of the chapter, still undecided. Balaam was 
impartial to a tragic degree. Every factor 
in his equation canceled out and left him his 
problem unsolved. 

Some morning you walk out of the house 



252 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

with a feeling of delicious uncertainty. 
Which way shall you go? 'Tis a holiday, 
perhaps, and you are perfectly free to choose 
your direction. Shall it be north or south? 
There are advantages either way; and for 
the moment you balance the one against the 
other. Perhaps there is wisdom as well as 
pleasure in the mood of indecision. We 
form some judgments rashly. Some of the 
saddest journeys of life are those in which 
we retrace our steps over the wrong path. 
JBut to tarry too long at the gate, to weigh 
considerations too finely, is a disease. 
Balaam had that philosophical spirit in 
deadly form. He never could quite make 
up his mind. The more he pondered the 
more unsettled he became. 

I have a friend who reminds me of 
Balaam. He is an exceedingly wise man, is 
my friend. When he speaks wisdom falls 
from his lips. He is so wise that if he 
stopped half way through his talk, I might 
know how to vote or what to think. The 
misfortune is that after he has stated, in 
beautiful language, all the reasons for sup- 
porting a particular proposition, he goes on 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 253 

to name, with equal force, the countervailing 
arguments. And with this result, that, at 
the close of his speech, I am as much con- 
fused as when he began. Point against point, 
he checks them all off until, so far as he is 
concerned, my mind is in chaos. Over and 
over again I have wished he would nail his 
flag to the masthead of some particular 
cause, even if he had to surrender later. 

You remember how, as children, we used 
to strip the petals one by one from a field 
daisy. "She loves me, she loves me not; she 
loves me, she loves me not." And so on, 
until the last petal had fallen. And if one 
did not choose to accept the decision, he 
could select another flower and repeat the 
monologue. Meantime, some less wistful 
and more venturesome boy carried off the 
girl. 

To such heroic note life is keyed. Most 
of the world's prizes fall to him who knows 
how to decide. During the early days of 
the French Revolution there was a moment 
in which, conceivably, the tide might have 
turned. The mob was pressing toward 
Louis's palace. "Shall I fire, sir?" asked the 



254 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

general. "Not yet, not yet," was the reply. 
Again the same question, and again the same 
answer. Then, as the mob pressed closer, 
Louis cried: "Now fire." "It is too late, 
sir," came the reply. "Can't you see that 
the rabble and the soldiers are already ex- 
changing arms?" And the life of Louis XVI 
paid forfeit for his indecision. Who does 
not despise the shuffling and side-stepping 
of the Balkan States? This carrying of 
water on both shoulders shames everybody. 
If they should be crushed, in the melee, out 
of the semblance of sovereign states, most 
of us would feel that they had but gotten 
their deserts. 

"How long halt ye between two opinions?" 
cried the prophet of old. It is not more 
argument that most of us are needing. It is 
action we need. We know our duty just as 
well as we need to know it. More informa- 
tion tends only to confuse. Better make a 
hundred mistakes than stand undecided at 
the gate, as Balaam did. Balaam knew 
perfectly well what he ought to do. He 
knew equally well what he wanted to do. 
And between the two you see him suspended, 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 255 

waiting for some one else to cast the decid- 
ing vote. Pilate had an opportunity to im- 
mortalize himself. Had he done what he 
knew was right, the Christian Church would 
make pilgrimage to his resting place, or 
build him a mausoleum. But in the moment 
of supreme importance he wanted to debate 
with Jesus. And later he asked the rabble 
what they thought he ought to do. Any- 
thing to be rid of the necessity of deciding. 
An army chaplain tells of an officer who 
came to discuss the Bible. He could not 
understand certain doctrines, he declared. 
And he put up such a wry face that one 
might have imagined he was really losing 
sleep over the matter. But the chaplain 
knew his man, and this is how he answered : 
"Yes, I know that many passages in Scrip- 
ture are confusing. The seventh command- 
ment, however, is perfectly plain." So I 
make free to say that in most of our moral 
dilemmas the real issue is perfectly plain. 
All we lack is the courage to take the path 
we see. 

But poor Balaam! He attempted the 
most hopeless task in the world; he tried to 



256 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

go both ways at once. You cannot do that 
on a sidewalk or in a railway train. But 
multitudes of people seem to think it can 
be done in the soul. Balaam tried. He 
tried exceedingly hard. It seemed he never 
would give up trying. Balaam was a singu- 
larly gifted man. Some of the most exalted 
words of Scripture fell from his lips while 
he was trying to face both ways. Take, for 
example, this glowing fore-glimpse of 
Messiah: "I shall see him, but not now: I 
shall behold him, but not nigh: there shall 
come a Star out of Jacob, and a Scepter 
shall rise out of Israel." An unusual man, 
only, could say that. Balaam said it. Take 
this tender panegyric of the good: "Let me 
die the death of the righteous, and let my 
last end be like his." Only one who really 
loved goodness would say that. Balaam said 
it. Then imagine such a man paltering with 
Balak, his eyes glued to the reward of his 
perfidy. 

But you do not need to imagine it. You 
can see it any day : upright men stooping to 
chicanery and deceit; tender hearts steeling 
themselves to cruel work ; Christians playing 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 257 

with fire. It has been noted that three of 
the most brilliant public men America ever 
produced, each of Presidential timber, failed 
of their supreme ambition — Clay, Webster, 
Blaine. They were towering men. But each 
was obsessed with desire to be President: so 
obsessed that he was willing to face both 
ways. Men called Clay the "Great Com- 
promiser." And both Webster and Blaine 
trimmed their sails to the fitful breeze. And 
all three died, mortally wounded at the heart. 
"No man can serve two masters," said Jesus. 
But the world has never given up hope of 
doing it. We want the rewards, both of 
goodness and evil. The circus-actor rides 
two horses at once, but not headed in oppo- 
site directions. We are attempting, in 
morals, a feat which the circus-rider would 
not attempt in the ring. It is both heart- 
breaking and hopeless. 

Let me show you how hopeless. Turn a 
few pages of Scripture, and you find this 
record: "Balaam also, the son of Beor, they 
slew with the sword." In the camp of 
Israel's enemies, by the hand of the people 
he had tried to curse, he fell — type of the 



258 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

man who faces both ways. I say nothing 
about his personal grief. Nobody had use 
for him. He merely lived on — like Benedict 
Arnold — to curse the day he was born. The 
fate of facing both ways ! One day, a good 
many years ago, I asked my younger brother 
to push off our boat from the stake. He 
pushed well, for he was strong. But he 
forgot to let go the stake. He was also 
afraid to take his feet from the deck of the 
boat. There he hung for a few seconds, 
while the sail filled and the boat swung 
sharply away. I shouted, but to no purpose, 
and an instant later he was floundering in 
the bay. How vivid that scene is after 
twenty-five years! — perhaps because I see 
the thing repeated constantly : men trying to 
hold God with one hand and sin with the 
other. High dreams won't save them: 
Balaam had great visions. Passions of 
goodness won't save them: Balaam wanted 
to be good. But he also wanted to have his 
own way. He demonstrated the despair of 
the experiment of facing both ways. 



XVIII 

THE MAN WHO RAN PAST 
THE SIGNAL 

According to press dispatches, the blame 
for the latest New Haven Railroad horror 
is likely to be fixed upon the dead engineer. 
Perhaps it were better so. The poor man 
is past objecting, and blame must always 
be set down at somebody's door. The 
world's sense of grievance at such a tragedy 
is rarely abated until somebody is blamed. 
Better, almost, to blame the wrong person 
than to leave responsibility unplaced. Yet, 
what a task it is! Nothing in the world is 
more difficult than a just apportionment of 
blame. And such solemn business, too — far 
more solemn than the distribution of praise. 
Praise is sunshine. Even an undeserved 
flood of it seldom hurts the recipient. 
Whereas blame is vitriol. It burns, and 
leaves such a piteous scar — deepest when 
undeserved. 

259 



260 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

But we are thinking of Pilate, the man 
who once ran past the warning signal; the 
man who has always been blamed. Nor do 
I think he can be cleared. I shall not even 
try. He pulled the trigger: he let the fury 
loose upon our Lord. However reluctant 
his part in the tragedy, it was dreadful and 
definite. He "delivered Jesus to be cruci- 
fied." Outside the trenches, somewhere in 
Europe, to-night lies a mother's boy with a 
bullet wound in his head. For the moment 
I forget the thousands of such slain: I am 
thinking of one white face splotched with 
crimson. Who's to blame? The foe who 
pulled the trigger, or the munition worker 
who made the shell, or the commanding 
officer who gave the signal to charge, or the 
sovereign whose imperial ambitions turned 
a continent into a shambles? Who is to 
blame that a mother's boy lies cold, with his 
unseeing eyes toward the stars, outside the 
trenches, somewhere in Europe? I do not 
know. Fortunately I do not need to be 
informed. I should not want to be God. 

But this is certain. Somebody had to pull 
the trigger to complete the awful tragedy of 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 261 

hate. Lacking the trigger-hand the whole 
enginery of destruction were as harmless as 
a summer breeze. Somebody must release 
the missile toward the head of that mother's 
boy. If not Hans, then Fritz; if not Jean, 
then Jacques. Somebody. Always some- 
body. And so I think of Pilate. Let every- 
body else bear a just share of the blame — 
Judas, Herod, Caiaphas, the priests, the 
rabble who flung the taunts, and the soldiers 
who drove the nails. Even so, we cannot 
clear Pilate. He did his part : he pulled the 
trigger. 

What remains to be said? Well, for 
example, this: that he was a well-meaning 
man who wished no harm to our Lord. The 
fact is that he had, offhand, no deeper 
interest in the case than we have in the feuds 
of African tribesmen. Evidently, Pilate 
was not partial to Jews. Likely he some- 
times wished, as a certain Roman emperor 
did concerning the early Christians, that the 
whole sect had one neck and he could wring 
it. What did he care whether the priests 
liked Jesus, or what Jesus thought of them? 
The whole affair was one of superlative in- 



262 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

difference to him — until it was brought 
within his official purview. Even then he 
took the first opportunity to transfer the 
case to Herod. He wanted nothing to do 
with it. Far be it from him to look for 
trouble: he always tried to look the other 
way when trouble was around. He was a 
well-meaning man who certainly wished no 
harm to Jesus. And as that sort of man 
Pilate was used to help on the crucifixion. 

I wish somebody would write a book on 
the crimes of the well-meaning man ; I mean 
the crimes in which he becomes unwilling and 
unintentional partner. Evil never can get 
on without the aid of the well-meaning man. 
It uses him for a foil, sights its gun on his 
kindly shoulder, lets him pull its chestnuts 
out of the fire. You do not suppose that a 
certain club's waiters were in the Chicago 
poisoning plot? That would be too risky. 
Criminals know better than to share their 
secrets widely. They do not need to. There 
are plenty of well-meaning men who can be 
counted upon to carry out a nefarious pur- 
pose, and with this advantage — that they do 
not know what they are doing. 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 263 

For example: the liquor forces of our 
country are fighting desperately. They like 
not the writing on the wall. But they have 
changed their tactics. They are not trucu- 
lent any more: they are suave, benignant, 
ingratiating. They do so yearn to be good. 
And they are so suddenly solicitous for the 
welfare of the land. They know perfectly 
well that if the hands are turned back on the 
prohibition clock, well meaning people must 
do the turning. None but good citizens can 
ever defeat a great reform, once launched. 
But, alas! you never can be sure what the 
average well-intentioned citizen will do — 
with specious voices in his ears. And here 
are we trying so hard to be neutral in the 
greatest war of the ages that nobody in 
particular loves us. Belligerents buy our 
munitions, and pay hard cash for the same. 
But I do not think we should feel flattered 
if we knew what they really think of us. 
With the best of intentions, and without 
mercenary aims at the beginning, hating 
war and all its misbegotten progeny, we have 
succeeded in pleasing nobody — unless it be 
God. And I fear that when the final history 



264 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

is written we shall not appear to have pleased 
him. If we had not been so indiscriminately 
well-meaning, we might have saved Belgium 
— and God knows what beside. "Peace- 
makers or Laodiceans?" Concerning the 
one, Jesus said, "Blessed are" they. But 
concerning the other: "I would that thou 
wert cold or hot. So then because thou art 
. . . neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee 
out of my mouth." 

And here is the well-meaning man with 
Jesus Christ before him. Always the real 
trial of Jesus is in the court of the well- 
meaning man. I refer to the man who ad- 
mires our Lord, and approves of the church, 
and sends his children to Sunday school. 
Always the trial is before him. Still, as of 
old, Jesus's friends cannot save him from a 
cross. Still, as of old, even his enemies can- 
not send him to it — without Pilate's consent. 
Always some Pilate between the mob and its 
vengeance. And sometimes I fancy that 
Jesus has more to fear from the well-mean- 
ing man than from all arch-haters and arch- 
conspirators. Porphyry Celsus, Julian the 
apostate, Voltaire with his terrible scorn, 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 265 

Renan with his laughing compliments, Brad- 
laugh with his clumsy hate — these, plus all 
more modern foes, never can send Jesus to 
his cross. Pilate must speak. Alas! we 
know just what he said, one fateful morn- 
ing, long years ago. I wonder what he says 
to-day — the well-meaning man? 

But other factors must be considered in 
making up Pilate's case. Doubtless, if 
Pilate had consulted his personal feelings, 
he would have let Jesus go. But Pilate had 
a position to maintain. He was Roman 
governor, with none too secure a footing, 
either at Rome or in Judaea. He could 
hardly be expected to take chances with his 
official head, even to gratify his better self. 
He must do the politic thing. And that was 
all he did when he sent our Lord to Calvary. 
Thus, not "conscience" but "position" doth 
make cowards of us all. Sometimes I fear 
that "position" makes more cowards than 
"conscience" does. All that a man hath — 
truth and honor and love — will he be tempted 
to give, in order that he may keep his "place 
in the sun." 

Position is one of the most expensive 



266 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

things in the world. The cost of "up-keep" 
is sometimes tremendous. You will hear 
men discuss frankly the "cost" of mainte- 
nance for an automobile. Many a citizen is 
driving a "Ford" because he found he could 
not afford the cost of maintaining a higher 
grade car. Manufacturers and railroad men 
are always figuring on "cost of maintenance" 
for their properties. But most of us forget 
by the time we get to the soul. A friend of 
mine, now a British subject, interested me 
by always wearing a silk hat and a long coat 
to business. No matter how warm the day, 
or how inclement the weather, always the 
"top hat," as they call it, always the long- 
tailed coat. Days when a good American 
straw hat was far too heavy for my crown, 
still for him the dignified hat and coat. And 
when I ventured to ask an explanation, this 
is what I got: "Why, man, I have a position 
to maintain. I cannot afford to be mistaken 
for my clerk." No, I suppose he couldn't. 
But for me, the "cost of maintenance" would 
seem prohibitively high when the ther- 
mometer stood at ninety. 

And if physical comfort were the only 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 267 

thing we sacrifice to position! Some one 
tells of being shown through a lordly estate 
— such as Biltmore. Roads, trees, gardens, 
lakes, hedges, fountains — it was like an em- 
bodied dream of paradise. Then the visitor, 
with characteristic Yankee interest, inquired 
how much the estate might be worth. And 
the guide's face went serious, as he replied: 
"I do not know how much it is worth, but I 
know what it cost. It cost the owner his 
soul." History has few more pathetic figures 
than that of Wolsey, once master of Eng- 
land, next to the king. His was such an envi- 
able place in the sun. He loved it so well. 
And he tried with infinite desperation to 
hold it against all comers. Like mariners in 
jeopardy, he was willing to throw over the 
cargo for the sake of the ship. Ah, but some- 
times the cargo is worth more than the ship. 
Sometimes the ship is not worth saving apart 
from the cargo. And you see Wolsey at 
the end — broken, lights out in his soul, un- 
befriended, crying, piteously, "Would that 
I had served my God as faithfully as I have 
served my king!" To pay everything for 
up-keep of position — and then to lose it! 



268 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

But you? As a prophet of God, I am 
venturing to ask what the costs of main- 
tenance have been for your prestige or busi- 
ness standing. Are there any tragedies 
behind the brilliant screen of your success? 
Any ghosts of ideals ? Any wraiths of love ? 
Sometimes the issue is clear cut between 
holding one's position and keeping his friend. 
Ask any great lover which is most worth 
keeping. Sometimes the cleavage lies sharp 
and threatening between preferment and 
honor. And, then, again Jesus Christ is in 
court. I do not ask why he came. All I 
ask is which way you vote. Maybe God was 
pleased to have Pilate governor of Judsea. 
Maybe Pilate was a better man for the place 
than any other they were likely to have. 
And maybe, if Pilate had done the brave 
thing, he would have enjoyed a longer 
tenure. But that is supposition. He held 
his position at the expense of Jesus Christ. 
And I do not think that any position is worth 
holding, or any glory worth coveting, or any 
love worth nourishing, after that sacrifice. 

O, Pilate, I wonder if your solicitude with 
respect to your position is itself a confession ? 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 269 

Did you ever try to take a bone from a dog? 
And did you notice that an ordinary dog 
will growl most violently over a stolen bone? 
His protest is a confession. And thus I 
observe among humans. Blessings which 
deeply belong to us are seldom so precarious 
as those in which our right is doubtful. It is 
the love we do not deserve, or the honor we 
do not sanctify, or the power we irreverently 
use — these keep us anxious. Some securities 
may be slept on: they will be quoted at par 
the next morning. God is not the kind of 
"jealous God" we often picture him. " 'Tis 
God give skill." And 'tis God give honor- 
able fortune, and place of trust, and price- 
less friendship. Having given, he expects 
us to keep against any lower claim than his. 
The only adequate warrant for resigning a 
high position is for the sake of a higher and 
finer. If Pilate had been sure of himself, 
he might safely have voted for Jesus Christ. 
But my story hurries. Pilate did not get 
through the trial without explicit warning. 
Matthew says that a message came from the 
governor's wife: "Have thou nothing to do 
with that just man : for I have suffered many 



270 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

things this day in a dream because of him." 
How like a woman! God can tell women 
some things more easily than he can tell 
men. A man usually wants an explanation. 
If he has a dream, he begins to ask what 
indigestible thing he ate the night before. 
Like Thomas, he declares, "Except I see 
the print of the nails, I will not believe." 
Women are wiser. They accept some mes- 
sages without asking to have them repeated. 
A real woman will read love in your eye 
before you know it is there. She can sense 
danger before you dream it. She has a sort 
of intuition of the safe road. Pilate would 
do well to heed that cry of pain from a 
woman. 

Especially as the warning note was one 
of many. If the cautionary signal had not 
matched others in Pilate's soul, we should 
never have known about it. God is forever 
blocking the road to evil, but, like Balaam, 
we do not realize that it is God intercepting. 
Up and down our coasts, with the approach 
of a heavy storm, signals are flung. We 
think so highly of shipping and human 
lives that we, as a government, have gone 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 271 

into the business of warning mariners. God 
has always been doing that with the souls of 
men. If we put to sea in defiance of the 
signal, God is not to blame. With a solici- 
tude we cannot fathom, and in ways too 
numerous to count, he hoists his warnings in 
our souls. Most of the moral shipwrecks 
are gratuitous. The storm is not to blame. 
Not even a West Indian hurricane, blowing 
up the coast of life, need affright the man 
who knows when to anchor. But to put out 
to sea against the signals in the soul invites 
tragedy. 

This Pilate did, Pilate the well meaning. 
With warnings crying in his soul, he made 
decision against them. One need not be told 
what followed. Barring details, the sequence 
is always the same. Have you noticed that 
the pilot-house on a steamer is always dark 
at night? Even the lights from the cabins 
are shut off. Only the light of the stars 
overhead, and the lights on the sea beyond, 
and the tiny light shining upon the face of 
the compass. Poor Pilate: the first thing 
he did was to put out the light in the bin- 
nacle. He disregarded his soul. 



272 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

And then? We need not tarry over the 
details of his course. Pilate did the things 
people commonly do, once they are com- 
mitted to the wrong. He cross-examined 
the Prisoner, hoping perhaps to find himself 
in the right, after all. Then he proposed a 
discussion concerning truth — and you will 
notice that when a man wants to argue the 
nature of truth he is probably not walking 
in it. Then he tried to appeal to the better 
nature of the crowd; in other words, he 
sought to lead them to make the decision he 
was not willing, himself, to make. Then, 
in utter dismay, he gave the adverse word 
and sent for a basin. In other words, he did 
everything except the right manful thing. 
He declined to vote for Jesus Christ except 
with the crowd. 

You can see him holding the basin, not 
very steadily perhaps. Something ails his 
hands — something that Lady Macbeth would 
have understood. There are stains that do 
not wash off — stains of cruelty, of suspicion, 
of prejudice, of injustice, as well as franker 
stains. For my part I would rather be 
stained with hot blood than with cold. 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 273 

Pilate's was a stain of cold blood. He was 
not even angry at Jesus; he was trying to 
save himself. And we smile, through our 
tears perhaps, at Pilate's industry — as if the 
stain of a vote against Jesus Christ could 
be rubbed away with water. 

And so, with Pilate's vote, and the basin 
in Pilate's hand, Jesus was led away. I do 
not think that Pilate ever saw Jesus again. 
That was his last glimpse — our Lord being 
led out of Pilate's court with Pilate's vote. 
Perhaps Pilate followed the tragedy, and 
sometimes wished he had the courage of 
Judas — to forget by a leap in the dark. I 
do not know. This much I do know: that 
to watch Jesus Christ disappear over the 
door-sill of your business; to see his face 
fade out of your home or your love; to let 
him go from your toil or your pain, and 
by your own vote, is a tragedy for two 
worlds. 



XIX 

THE MAN WHO WENT WITH 
THE CROWD 

A recent news paragraph noted the dis- 
covery of a previously unknown satellite in 
the heavens. Unfortunately, I failed to 
charge my mind with details of the find, 
hence I cannot now recall whether this new 
moon is an eighth for Jupiter or a first for 
Venus. Unfortunately; for I am to talk 
about satellites. Besides, one hates to have 
his memory play him false. Some day he 
might forget an item more important than 
moons. But the satellites I want to talk 
about are terrestrial, not celestial ; not globes, 
but folks. I mean the lives that revolve un- 
ceasingly and helplessly about other lives; 
the souls that shine by reflected light only; 
the men and women who, in our terse modern 
phrase, "have no minds of their own." 

And, for want of better example, I have 
selected Lot. Lot was typically a satellite. 

274 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 275 

He comes into view, for the first time, trail- 
ing along after his famous uncle. As the 
record has it: "So Abram departed, . . . 
and Lot went with him." Fortunately per- 
haps, or we should never have heard of him, 
any more than the world would have been at 
pains to remember Boswell except as the 
biographer of Johnson, or Hardy save for 
his adoring love for Lord Nelson. Reflected 
light is better than darkness. At least Lot 
got himself remembered. But to the end 
of the story he kept his role of satellite. 
He was always depending upon some one 
else, letting others make his choices for him. 
You never see him stand out alone except 
in his pathetic retreat from the doomed city, 
whither he had gone to be with the crowd. 
Always a satellite! 

But let me say a good word in passing. 
Not every one can be a great luminary. 
Moons are useful. We should hate to lose 
the silent, cold companion of earth's flight. 
Lovers in particular would miss the calm, 
celestial face which lights eyes with unearthly 
beauty, and turns groves into mystically 
illumined temples. A thousand times have 



276 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

we watched the crescent grow to full-orbed 
glory, and followed its silver path across 
stream or sea. You recall that it was down 
the wondrously shining highway of the har- 
vest moon that the "Harvester" saw first 
his "dream-girl." Perhaps the moon would 
have preferred to be a sun. Certain it is 
that some terrestrial satellites would. But 
who wants twenty-four hours of direct sun- 
light? Next to the dignity of being a great 
sun is to be a faithful moon. God ordained 
both. For, as the ancient record puts it, 
"God made two great lights; the greater 
light to rule the day, and the lesser light to 
rule the night." 

And as in heaven, so on earth. The 
world's business cannot get on without loyal 
satellites. And if God has appointed most 
of us to shine by reflection, we must be sure 
to keep our faces bright. There is no spare 
time for grieving because we were not given 
a mission like Abraham's. There is just time 
enough to fill Lot's role in the richest way 
possible. There must always be common 
soldiers as well as commanders. There must 
be followers, or of what use are leaders? 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 277 

There must be disciples to practice the les- 
sons of a master. Thank God, then, for the 
privilege of being a worthy satellite. 

For that matter we must all be that some- 
times. Man, who kindled you? Abraham 
Lincoln confessed that he owed everything 
to his "angel mother." Tall, stalwart, tower- 
ing in courage and pity, once he had lain in 
a woman's arms. The first smile that ever 
irradiated that homely face was doubtless 
answer to the love-light in a mother's eyes. 
God pity the lads and lassies who had no 
chance to cling to a woman's knees. The 
best of us were satellites once. We revolved 
about a life which would have laid itself down 
for ours. And we remember, to-day, with 
unspeakable tenderness and reverent grati- 
tude, those dependent days. How many 
would like to be children again, for a day, 
for the rare joy of being mothered! 

And in "our sterner manhood,'* women 
still mold us. And what we are depends in 
no small degree upon the kind of women 
who do the molding. There is a type of man 
described scornfully as a "woman's satellite." 
You know the type and hate it. But Robert 



278 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

Browning's life revolved about Elizabeth 
Barrett's. None ever accused him of lack- 
ing virility. He was "all man." But he 
drew strength and sweetness, joy and 
courage from a woman, as a honeybee draws 
honey from a flower. Dante never got far 
away from the face of his idolized Beatrice. 
What of Plutarch without his woman? 
Well enough to prate about woman as the 
"weaker vessel" and the "clinging vine." I 
notice, however, that men are seldom so 
strong that they are not weak in a woman's 
hands, and that, despite their bass voices 
and blustering ways, they do an immense 
amount of clinging. One great misgiving 
I have with respect to equal suffrage is that 
the new woman may lose part of her unique 
power of command. 

So everywhere: satellites. Like Andrew, 
for example. It may be said that Andrew 
would never have been heard of apart from 
his relation to Peter. Very likely. Andrew 
was not the man to turn the world upside 
down. He was the man to help hold it 
steady against the rockings of the volcanic 
Peter. Perhaps you would not have loved 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 279 

him as ardently as you would have loved his 
brother. Peter is the sort of man who always 
gets himself loved, in spite of his faults. 
But you would feel safer with Andrew. You 
could put your finger upon Andrew when 
you needed to do so. I like Andrew. The 
world needs many of him — more Andrews 
than Peters. He makes the ballast. He 
builds the caissons. He digs the wells. Call 
him "satellite," and yet remember that the 
world would be very lonely without him. 

Some one tells of a cabin boy who sat 
outside the galley, peeling potatoes, and 
talking about the good voyage they were 
making. "And what do you do to help the 
ship?" asked his interviewer, in derision. 
"Why, I peel the potatoes," was the proud 
and unanswerable reply. No good voyage 
without the potato-peeler, or his equivalent. 
Always some must serve. Always some 
must "blush unseen." Blessed be the helpers ! 

And God. With respect to God, all of 
us, the strongest and most resourceful, are 
satellites only. That is, we swing round him. 
We borrow all our beams from the Sun of 
Righteousness. We glow by reflection. 



280 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

Yet, as the moon helps steady the earth in 
her orbit, and both help hold the sun in his 
place, so we serve God. He cannot do with- 
out us. His august and eternal plans are 
laid in our hands for furtherance. Hear 
that bitter cry: "Curse ye Meroz, curse ye 
bitterly, because they came not to the help 
of the Lord." Jesus trusted his task to 
human helpers; Peter and Thomas, and 
Judas, even. Always Abraham must have 
company. He cannot go out and up quite 
alone. He needs Lot. 

And if Lot were the sort of company that 
Abraham needed, I should have compliments 
only to pay. But the historic Lot was differ- 
ent. He was a satellite who absorbed all 
the light, giving nothing out. He did not 
truly travel with Abraham: he hung on to 
his uncle's skirts. I think it was Woodrow 
Wilson who divided humanity into two 
classes — "lifters" and "leaners." Lot was a 
"leaner" He could not hold himself up — 
to say nothing of carrying his share of the 
load. He lacked spine. There are certain 
species of birds, notably cuckoos, which 
build no nests for themselves. They lay 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 281 

their eggs in nests built by others. They 
live and replenish, thanks to the industry of 
worthier fellows. And, alas! there are 
cuckoos among the human species — males 
who seem never to have glimpsed the glory 
of being men; females who, to judge from 
their appearance and conversation, fulfill 
their mission when they wear clothes and 
play buzzard upon the other sex; young 
people whose brains have yet to be pierced 
with a solemn sense of obligation to the world 
they live in. O, the unpardonable sin of 
being dead weight! 

During an exciting college boat race an 
oar snapped just as the owner's boat was 
forging ahead. For an instant the shell 
swerved perilously. Then, with a cry of 
good cheer to his mates, the owner of the 
broken oar leaped into the water. As he 
explained afterward, he could not afford to 
let his comrades pull his dead weight. If he 
could not do his part, he ought to give them 
fair chance to win the race. Lot never would 
have done that. He would have stayed in 
the boat at any cost to others. He would 
have jumped only to save his own life. He 



282 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

was a satellite in the uncomplimentary sense 
of the word. 

You see this as the story progresses. A 
day came for uncle and nephew to part. 
They discovered that "one house is seldom 
big enough for two families." Even if 
Abraham and Lot could continue to get on 
together, their servants could not. Abraham 
gave his nephew the choice — hill country, or 
plain. And Lot, the younger and the be- 
holden, did the thoroughly characteristic 
thing. He chose the plain because it was 
easy — leaving his uncle the uplands and 
hardship. O, I do not blame him too severely 
for that. He merely took advantage of the 
frank generosity of his uncle. People ought 
not to make offers they do not wish to see 
accepted. I assume that Abraham was per- 
fectly content — being a real man. And Lot 
did precisely what you would expect — being 
a satellite. He chose the easy, unwitting 
what it would cost him. 

Every normal person likes a big easy 
chair — one of the sort that seems to come 
up to meet you with luxurious seduction. A 
sitting room lacking such comforts looks 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 283 

cheerless. And nobody else on earth enjoys 
a great chair more thoroughly than the 
author enjoys it. But anatomists are say- 
ing that one may spend too much time in 
an easy chair — that the human back needs 
native bracing more than it needs cushions. 
Body relaxation, over indulged, weakens the 
nerves, softens the muscles, and by so much 
unmakes the physical man. Hence it is not 
quixotism which prompts some people to 
choose a straight-backed chair. All of which 
is a parable. We cannot afford to let life 
be made too easy. A "soft snap" tends to 
make the soul of a man soft. 

You can spoil a hunting dog by permitting 
him to lie all day, and every day, on a warm 
rug before the fire. And you can spoil a 
boy or a girl in the same fashion. At all 
cost of present luxury, we must keep life 
heroic. We must decline those abatements 
that weaken and emasculate the soul. 

Not many years ago William James said 
solemnly that if war should be abolished, 
we must find some substitute for the develop- 
ment of those heroic qualities which war 
always brings into play. I wonder if the 



284 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

plague of fire and steel now devastating a 
continent means that God could see no less 
expensive way of saving to Europe its man- 
hood and womanhood. At any rate, this is 
what appears : whole nations forgetting their 
pleasures for the sake of their souls. His- 
tory is savagely blunt on this score. It shows 
the tragedy of ease. It declares that the 
only enemy which can destroy a people is 
the silent, insidious, smiling enemy within 
their own bones. I am not pleading for 
hair shirts, or for any sort of gratuitous self- 
denial — merely for the courage to say "No" 
to the luxury that unfits the soul. Lot, 
fleeing from Sodom, is the divine logic of 
choosing the easy in life. 

But of that a moment later. Meanwhile, 
I want you to notice how Lot happened to 
be in Sodom. Frankly, I do not know just 
how he got there. He would probably have 
told you that he had not the faintest inten- 
tion of taking up residence in that dissolute 
city of the plain. He merely liked the 
neighborhood of it — as so many people enjoy 
the neighborhood of sin. So, when he chose 
the easy country, "he pitched his tent toward 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 285 

Sodom." That was all; he merely "pitched 
his tent" that way. He was a good man, 
in the main, even if a satellite. He would 
have said that he hated wrong. But he 
"pitched his tent toward Sodom." 

And if anything were needed to complete 
the tragedy, you have it here. The moral 
shipwrecks of the world would be less pitiful 
if men deliberately drove their craft upon 
the rocks. Few are guilty of such stupidity. 
They merely neglect all soundings, or sail 
in the fog. And the crash startles them as 
much as it startles the world. I firmly 
believe that most people mean well. Induce- 
ments being equal, superficially, they would 
choose the good. It is not easy to forget a 
mother's prayers and reproaching eyes. It 
is not easy to swallow the lump of moral 
protest in one's throat. It is not easy to beat 
conscience into insensibility. Some of us 
have never confessed the way the "apples of 
Sodom" tasted at first. Still, like Lot, we 
pitch our tent toward the wrong city. 

I do not ask you to open your heart for 
me: all I ask is that you open it wide for 
your own inspection. Perhaps you came 



286 MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 

from the country, years ago. This is not 
Sodom; this is the plain-country you chose 
because life here seemed more advantaged. 
But which way did you pitch your tent? 
Or, you were born here. You never lived 
anywhere else. Then, without my saying so, 
you know this is not Sodom. Souls as rare 
as any that bless the world live here, as 
neighbors. And still I ask, Which way did 
you pitch your tent — toward Sodom or the 
other way? In a neighboring garage, is a 
beautiful leopard — if so treacherous a beast 
may ever be called beautiful. Wonderful 
eyes, coat like velvet, paws soft as felt. But 
claws. The leopard changes neither spots 
nor disposition. Watch him at play with a 
ball, and you may think of him as a great 
kitten. But keep your face away from the 
cage. The heroine in one of Locke's stories 
bore to her grave the terrible marks of a 
"pet" like that. Sin is a leopard. It never 
can be tamed. Though it wear the livery of 
heaven, it has claws — as some of you know. 
For God's sake keep your face away from 
the cage. At your peril you pitch your 
tent toward Sodom. 



MEN WHO MISSED THE TRAIL 287 

There is not time for me to romance about 
Lot's residence in the city. Things went 
well for a time — they usually do. Then, 
suddenly, they went desperately wrong. 
And you see the man who went with the 
crowd, fleeing, like one mad, from the crowd. 
Who talked about "social sins" — the sin of 
the wineglass, of the card table, of licen- 
tiousness? There are no "social sins." Sin 
is anti-social. In the issue, it leaves the trans- 
gressor alone with the most complete and 
unconquerable loneliness in the world. 

Yes, I know Lot was saved, "so as by 
fire." God has wonderful ways of redeem- 
ing us from the consequences of pitching 
toward Sodom. Nobody has yet guessed the 
patience and resourcefulness of God. But 
what a pity to tax him to bring us forth with 
a salvation "so as by fire"! 



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